Paytm Disburses $221 Mn Worth Loan In April 2022; Clocks In $12.7 Bn GMV

Publicly listed fintech giant Paytm has said its lending business has grown to 2.6 Mn loan disbursals worth $221 Mn, a year-on-year growth of 749%. Further, in the quarter ending March 2022, the Bengaluru-based fintech giant disbursed 6.54 Mn loans worth INR 3,553 Cr – a year-on-year growth of 417%.

The above-stated number includes loans disbursed by Paytm’s financial institution partners to both consumers and merchants. However, it excludes the number and the value of loans sourced by third parties through advertising on its platform and aggregation of EMIs on the POS devices.

The startup also strengthened its offline payments business with 3.2 Mn point of sale and other devices deployed, the company said. The total number of devices deployed across Paytm’s merchant base has an average rate of 300K deployments per month.

“We expect this growth to contribute to a rise in the number of merchants eligible for loans,” the company said in a BSE filing.

Paytm’s Q4 GMV Soars 105%

Fintech giant Paytm’s gross merchandise value (GMV) jumped 104% year-on-year to INR 2.59 Lakh Cr in the fourth quarter of FY22. In April 2022 alone, the total merchant GMV processed through Paytm aggregated to INR 0.95 Lakh Cr ($12.7 Mn), marking a year-on-year growth of 102%.

In Paytm’s case, GMV or gross merchandise value/volume refers to the total value of transactions processed on its merchant platform over the given period, instead of the formal customer-to-customer (C2C) exchange. GMV is the merchant payments processed through all instruments (Paytm Wallet, Paytm Payments bank account, other banks, net banking, credit and debit cards, UPI etc.)

The company also outlined that the number of users transacting on the platform has also grown by 44% year-on-year, resulting in 73.5 Mn users on the platform. This number is also 104% higher than the Q4 FY22 monthly average (71 Mn) as stated by Paytm.

Company Shares Up By 6%

The Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company offers several payment instruments including a wallet, FASTag services, net banking and UPI. The payments bank claims to power 33.3 Cr wallets and enables consumers to make payments at over 87,000 online merchants and 2.11 Cr in-store merchants.

In April 2022, Paytm also crossed INR 1 Lakh Cr UPI transaction volume mark, still holding a little over 10% of the UPI market share.

But being one of the first movers in the Indian payment sector was not enough and on its listing, the stock wiped over 20% of the market wealth on its debut day. It has since been on a downward trend and has tanked over 49% on a year-to-date basis.

In relief to the company, after the listed company announced its KPIs, the startup’s shares opened at INR 557.45 – a 2.63% rise. It continued to rise throughout the day and stayed green, weeks after continuously hitting its lowest price.