Paytm will bring 5 million merchants to digital platform by 2017

In a bid to advance digital payments in 2017, the mobile payments startup, Paytm plans to bring five million merchants closer to cashless transaction mode.

Announcing a plethora of new features to enhance security and increase usability both for consumers and merchants in its app, the e-commerce platform said that it has started working with distribution networks to make transaction process easier for merchants and suppliers.

Sudhanshu Gupta, Vice President, Paytm said, "While our field teams work on educating and onboarding merchants to accept Paytm, we understand that it is a need for our retailers to also be able to pay their suppliers digitally and we are working towards that."

Presenting an exquisite success in this year's last quarter, Paytm has introduced several features. The startup has enabled every Indian user to transact using Paytm, which is now available in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya and Punjabi.

Paytm also launched an 'App Password' feature on Android to provide additional safety to the users. The company has also introduced a toll-free number to enable feature phone and non-Internet users to go cashless with Paytm.

Notably, following PM Modi's demonetization announcement, the company was racking up over seven million transactions per day in the first two weeks. Between November 10 and December 20, Paytm added over 20 million new users, making its total user base to 170 million.

Amid this sudden success and growing subscription base, the other majors in the mobile payment market are seen trying their best to hinder the growth. For example, the State Bank Of India has blocked the option “Transfer to Paytm” and has asked users to use the State Bank buddy for Internet banking.

Since Paytm provides a better interface than SBI's Buddy, SBI's move has only disappointed users.

@TheOfficialSBI @theavinashrao SBI buddy interface is poor! Improve it first 😬 @paytm is much much better.

— Anirudh Naik (@AnirudhNaik24) December 24, 2016

On the other hand, Paytm is not the only e-commerce platform to make most of the demonetization effect. Since the announcement to ban notes of 500 and 1,000 was reported, FreeCharge's transaction also grew 12 times and has been increasing by the same average.