Paytm claims to have 3 million merchants in semi-urban and rural areas

On Monday, One97 Communications Limited, that owns digital payments giant Paytm, said that it has driven digital payments across the country’s semi-urban and rural areas, enabling cash-less transactions in more than three lakh villages.

It further stated that more than 3 million merchant partners across small towns like Kakkanav, Chitra Durga, Giri Nagar, Virudhu Nagar, Kangra, Angul, and Unnao among others, accept payments through Paytm. The company is touted to have a merchant base of approximately 7 million.

Paytm also stated that merchants in these villages are registering similar transaction size on their platform, as compared to merchants in the metros.

The company attributes Paytm QR, Money Transfer, and Bill payments to garner the highest number of transactions from these areas.

In March, the company had stated that it had deployed close to 400 million QR codes for its users and merchant base. This also includes deploying QRs for national marketing promotions, where customers can scan the Paytm QR on Newspaper ads, hoardings, posters, and even on FMCG product packs. It had further said more than 60 percent of its QR code users were from non-metros.

Speaking on the occasion, Kiran Vasireddy, COO, Paytm said,

“True development of an economy can only take place when villages and smaller towns, that are at the very grass-root levels, join the digital revolution. We are excited to see an increasing adoption of digital payments by our users and merchants in these areas. We will continue our efforts to reach out to people in every village and town in our country and educate them about the convenience of digital payments.”

Last week, Paytm introduced a first-of-its-kind ‘Merchant Referral’ feature on its platform. This enables small and medium merchant (SME) community to join the cashless revolution by accepting payments from any bank account into their own bank account at no charges.

The platform also introduced ‘My Payments’ for regular recurring payments such as house rent, maid or driver’s salary, milk and newspaper vendor payments for its users.

Earlier this month, Paytm had claimed the total annual value of payments made on its platform was close to $29 billion, with an average value of each transaction standing at Rs 337.

Its competitor, PhonePe, had said that its total annual value of payments run rate stood at $20 billion, with a merchant base of 300,000 and average transaction value of Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,000.