Adoption In Tier 2 & 3 Cities Leads To A Run Rate Of 5 Bn Transactions For Paytm

One97 Communications Limited, which owns digital payments company Paytm, has announced that it has achieved an annual run rate of 5 Bn transactions and $50 Bn in gross transaction value (GTV).

Kiran Vasireddy, COO, Paytm said, “We are witnessing phenomenal adoption in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, which is bringing in the new wave of growth for us.”

He further said, “We have been the largest contributor towards all form of digital payments, including UPI. In the offline domain, our team is committed to onboard and educate merchants to offer the convenience of digital payments for their customers. We will continue to invest further till we digitise payments for the majority of the small and large retailers in our country.”

Factors Contributing To The Growth Of Paytm

According to Paytm, cities such as Surat, Durgapur, Rajkot, Meerut, Imphal, Rohtak, Panipat, Mangalore, Ranchi, Puducherry, Rajamundri, Warangal, Jodhpur, Thrissur, Karnal, Madurai and Jamnagar are among the fastest adopters and are leading the digital wave.

Another factor that has contributed to the growth has been Paytm’s multilingual app. 25% of the Paytm users prefer using the app in their regional language.

Presently, Hindi is the most used language after English on its multilingual app, followed by Gujarati, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Kannada among others.

“Increase in usage of vernacular languages on the app reflects the trust in digital payments from consumers that hail from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns,” added Kiran.

A few other prominent factors leading to Paytm’s growth so far are:

• Increased adoption in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities which constitute 50% of the user base
• The adoption and growth of UPI by processing over 400 Mn BHIM UPI transactions since Jan’18
• 8 Mn offline merchant partners; 3X larger merchant base compared to Card Payments network
• Achieved 500% growth in P2P transactions last quarter

“ The platform has been able to create a network effect among its consumers and merchants. Given the multiple use cases, consumers prefer paying through Paytm, while the merchants accepting Paytm are seeing increased business and are also being able to pay digitally across their supply chain,” added Kiran.

The government’s push towards the adoption of digital payments has further helped in its acceptance among the masses. An encouraging trend that has been seen is increased usage among women.

According to Paytm, over the past year, female users on the platform have grown more than 100%. While millennials continue to be the most active users of digital payment, the platform has been witnessing an increase in the users above the age of 35 years as well.