Business News
Paytm invests another Rs 5,000 crore in payments business; integrates BHIM UPI
India’s biggest online payments company and mobile wallet, Paytm, plans to invest another Rs 5000 crore in the business over the next three years. Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma believes that the only competition to Paytm is themselves. Sharma also believes that the entry of global companies would shine a light on the country’s digital payments market. That will lead to fast standardisation of products and better consumer understanding, he further added.
Sharma also mentioned that Paytm has invested more than Rs 5,000 crore in mobile payments and that they will continue to be the largest investor in the country.
Paytm has also integrated the government’s mobile payments interface BHIM UPI on its platform. Using BHIM UPI will widen Paytm’s customer base and will increase the usability of the app.
Nevertheless, Paytm is likely to face stiff competition from Google Tez and Flipkart’s PhonePe. Both these platforms have been working with UPI for a while now. Several international companies have also entered India’s payments market since demonetisation last year. But Paytm has a huge advantage as it is currently used by around 200 million users, while Mobikwik has 65 million and PhonePe has 45 million users.
Paytm users will now be able to pay and receive money over BHIM UPI. It will also allow existing users of BHIM to connect their accounts with BHIM API on Paytm. New users would also be able to easily create BHIM accounts on Paytm.
Since its launch in December, BHIM UPI has been downloaded over 16 million times. This popularity can be owed to the fact that UPIs help users transfer funds form one bank to another with not additional cost and are faster than NEFT, as it does not need to wait to add a beneficiary and provide with details like IFSC codes. It is swifter than mobile wallets also as one has to transfer money to the wallet first.
According to a report in Mint, Paytm will train its 5 million merchant partners to create BHIM UPI IDs. Merchants will also be allowed to add multiple bank accounts with one Paytm BHIM UPI account.
