Here’s why Paytm is gearing up to explore products under employee and payroll benefits

With an active food wallet and a gift wallet already on offer for corporate employees, Paytm is now also planning to foray into other areas of employee benefits and reimbursements.

Speaking to YourStory on Tuesday, Renu Satti, MD and CEO of Paytm Payments Bank said,

“Paytm Payments Bank aims to offer a full stack solution for employees and payroll benefits, especially salary accounts, tax allowances, and reimbursements. We believe in providing a fully digital solution to our corporates and their employees, coupled with the benefits from the 6 million plus merchants who are a part of the payment ecosystem.”

With regard to its existing offerings, the company also has more than 500 companies signed up on the platform. Renu adds,

“We are ultimately building the spending ecosystem. The idea comes from the fact that what do individuals do once they get their salary? Spend it. And we are building most of the spending used cases on the platform including food, movie and travel ticketing among other things.”

Speaking on how they plan to roll out these solutions, Renu commented,

“We already offer solutions for tax allowances and salary accounts and will extend it to non-tax allowances as well. Corporates can get a one-stop offering for their employees including financial services through either our wallets or even bank accounts, whichever suits them best.”

Why is Paytm bullish about its corporate offerings?

Corporate offerings seem to be Paytm’s big bet to convert companies using their e-wallet services, towards salary accounts with the payments bank.

Renu states that at present, Paytm Payments Bank has close to 180 million bank accounts, a majority of which are wallet customers.

With a Payments Bank, the maximum balance for that an account can have is Rs 1 lakh at the end of the day. However, Renu explains that the regulations don’t cap the amount and value of transactions taking place intraday.

If an account has more than Rs 1 lakh as balance by the end of the day, the extra amount is automatically put in a fixed deposit with partner IndusInd Bank. Renu says this product capability allows customers to earn extra interest, without being charged any fee for withdrawals.

The company offers close to 4 percent annual interest on savings accounts, and up to 6.85 percent interest on fixed deposits.

Sharing some plans for the Payment Bank, Renu also said Paytm will set up close to 100,000 banking outlets across the country.

“We have a large base of 6 million merchants and we will be leveraging them. However, we will be shortlisting these banking correspondents. They could be a part of this subset (of merchants) or out of it.”