Paytm to invest Rs 10,000cr to ramp up its banking, financial services

Paytm will be investing Rs 10,000 crore over the next three years to ramp up its banking and financial services business.

“We will invest at least Rs 10,000 crore in our banking and financial services in the next three years. We hope to get the final approval for our payments bank operations soon so that we can roll out services,” Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told PTI.

The Fintech company that will soon offer payments bank services in the country claims to have already pumped in over Rs 3,200 crore in the last two years for its operations.

Paytm which had 218 million mobile wallet users at the end of March 2017, is also learnt to be in talks to raise funds. Japanese investor SoftBank reportedly could pick up stake in Paytm in the coming weeks. At present, Paytm operates a mobile wallet and e-commerce marketplace. With over 1.5 billion transactions on its platform, the company now aims to cross the 4.5 billion mark this year.

"We have seen significant growth and this year too, we expect to see a manifold growth to 4.5 billion. A significant part of this growth is coming from tier II and beyond cities," Sharma said. He added that cities like Jaipur, Sonipat, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Durgapur were among the fastest growing for the company.

Additionally, the Noida-based company also announced a partnership with MMTC-PAMP to allow consumers to purchase 24K 999.9 purity gold on its platform and store it in MMTC-PAMP's secure vaults free of charge. The company said customers can invest as low as one rupee. Customers will have the option of getting gold accumulated over one gramme to their homes or sell it back online.