Paytm achieves annual run rate of 5 billion transaction

New Delhi: Digital payments company Paytm said it has achieved an annual run rate of 5 billion transactions and $50 billion in gross transaction value (GTV), driven by a high volume of UPI payments, burgeoning debit and credit card users, and increased adoption of digital payments in tier-II and  III markets. The smaller towns now constitute 50% of its user base.

In the 2017-18 financial year, Paytm registered $14 billion in GTV. That means there’s been a more than three times growth since then. GTV is a measure of total sales volume transacted through the platform.

The fresh impetus comes from growing user bases in smaller cities. Surat, Durgapur, Rajkot, Meerut, Imphal, Rohtak, Panipat, Mangaluru, Ranchi, Puducherry, Rajahmundry, Warangal, Jodhpur, Thrissur, Karnal, Madurai and Jamnagar are among the fastest adopters and are leading the digital payments wave, the company said.

Paytm is said to account for nearly a third of the UPI payments in the country. Though National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) doesn’t give a break up on market share of each company or banking player, it said UPI transactions rose nearly 7% to 190 million in March.

Paytm’s multi-lingual app has also contributed to its growth with 25% of its user base transacting on the platform in their native languages. Hindi is the most used language after English, followed by Gujarati, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Kannada.

Since January, the platform has processed over 400 million Bhim UPI transactions.