Paytm aims to promote mobile in-store payments with 12/12 festival
Digital payment platform plans one-day offline shopping festival to drive greater sales for merchants and brand stores that accept Paytm, by offering deals and cashbacks.
Financial services platform Paytm will celebrate the second edition of its 12/12 festival on Tuesday, in collaboration with its five million seller partners. The offline shopping festival is aimed at driving greater sales for offline neighbour merchants and brand stores that accept Paytm, by offering deals and cashbacks on payments through Paytm. These include supermarkets, restaurants, pharmacy stores, petrol pumps, milk booths, and small retail merchants.
Named like its investor Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba’s annual flagship event Double 11 Sale, which takes place on November 11 every year since 2009, this is Paytm Mall’s second edition of 12/12. Paytm says this festival will be celebrated on every December 12.
Paytm’s grand plan
Backed by Softbank, SAIF Partners, Alibaba Group and Ant Financial, Paytm is India’s largest mobile first financial services platform offering payments, banking, lending, and insurance. They enable QR-based mobile payments for small and large merchants.
The 12/12 sale will see participation from prominent neighbourhood retailers like Balaram & Radharam Mullick, Arsalan Biryani (Kolkata), OM Mart & Surbhi Snacks (Mumbai), Shambhu’s & Khetla Aapa (Ahmedabad), Thaggu ke Samose (Jaipur), Paranthe wali gali (Chandni Chowk, Delhi), Karachi Bakery (Hyderabad), MS Brothers & AKK Foods (Chennai) and Fresh Co (Bangalore), as well as brands like Big Bazaar, Reliance Digital, Pantaloons, Apollo, More, Lenskart, Café Coffee Day, and Woodland, among others.
In a press release, Kiran Vasireddy, COO, Paytm, has said, "Paytm has become the preferred payment choice amongst customers for in-store payments in India. Today, Paytm is accepted at large retail chains as well as small stores across the country, and we are committed to building the best payments infrastructure for our merchant partners. With our ‘12.12 festival’ we celebrate customers walking into stores where our merchant partners welcome digital payments and offer great rewards for using Paytm.”
Although Paytm’s e-commerce app Paytm Mall – a platform connecting online customers to he offline retailers in their area – generally offers cashback and discounts, Paytm’s 12/12 sale offers cashback for dining out as well. However, despite the similarity in name, Alibaba’s 11/11 sale has a much larger scale, with the event this year churning out GMV of a whopping $25 billion.
