Paytm sees up to 3.5X growth in transactions amid COVID-19 pandemic

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Thursday said the company is witnessing up to 3.5X growth in transactions on its platform amid the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown as users turned to digital payments to make payments in a safe manner.

Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2020, Vijay said the company has also seen a growth in the average number of transactions being conducted in a week.

"If a customer was doing X transactions before, right now he's doing 2.5-3.5X transactions. Customers who are used to digital are getting engaged deeper and newer customers are coming on the platform...the number of customers who are on the platform and are doing more number of transactions has phenomenally increased...At a week-level, an active customer is doing two transactions," he said.

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Vijay said Paytm has been able to expand its user base even after discontinuing cashbacks on its platform.

"In the monetisation journey, we figured out that it is easy to acquire customers and to bring customers back by handing over cash back. This country has value conscious users. So we wanted to figure out who are the customers who are loyal on a platform for its service, not necessarily for the cashback...we actually grew the customer base without giving a cashback and active, DAU (daily active users), MAU (monthly active users) over the previous year," he said.

Paytm has made available various use cases that have brought customers to Paytm's platform, he added.

Talking about neobanks, Vijay said entities offering solutions that are scalable and offer superlative user experience will succeed.

"... use case that is scalable, meaning it has addressability for tens of million customers, and the experience is so superlative that even though you have a bank that is involved, you prefer this (neobank's) interface," he said.

He explained that Paytm had started with recharges and bill payments, and even though there was no money in it, the user experience drove customers to the platform.