Paytm Approved 60 Lakh Loans To Indians In 30 Days! Merchant Payments Surge To Rs 2.1 Lakh Crore

Paytm reported a 72 per cent year-on-year increase in its merchant payment volumes for the July and August period.

GMV

Its total merchant GMV — the value of total payments made to merchants – increased to Rs 2.10 lakh crore during the two months ended August 2022 from Rs 1.22 lakh crore during the year-ago period.

POS Devices

It also announced the deployment of 4.5 million devices (point-of-sale and soundbox) at merchant stores across the country during the period.

This is up 3.75x from 1.2 million devices as of August 2021 during the two-month period.

“With our subscription as a service model, the strong adoption of devices drives higher payment volumes, subscription revenues as well as merchant loan distribution,” Paytm said in an exchange filing.

Loan distribution

The company’s overall loan distribution business scaled to 6 million loans disbursed during July and August.

This is a growth of 246 per cent from last year’s disbursements during the two-month period that stood at 1.7 million.

Coming to the amount disbursed, the value increased 484 per cent to $568 million from around $96.8 million during the said period.

Company statement

It says that it continues to work with its partners to “review the evolving macro environment and accordingly moderation may be expected in our growth”.

That said, we continue to see ample growth and upsell opportunities in this business and are focusing on the quality of the book,” Paytm said. 

Merchants

Per its Q1 FY23 results announced in August 2022 merchant count stood at 28.3 million, up by 6.5 million from 21.8 million in Q1 FY22.

Its merchant loans vertical had also reported 56 per cent growth quarter on quarter in terms of volume, translating into disbursements of Rs 827 crore for the first quarter.

ED raids

The announcement on July-August operating metrics comes just days after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted a search operation at six of Paytm’s premises in Bengaluru  in the Chinese loan app case.

Raids were also carried out at other payment gateways including Razorpay and Cashfree Payments.

Paytm in its statement on September 4 said merchants under ED scrutiny are not linked to the company and that the funds frozen by ED don’t belong to Paytm or any of its group companies.