One97 Communications Limited (OCL) which owns the brand Paytm, India’s leading payments and financial services company and the pioneer of QR and mobile payments, today announced that in October it disbursed 3.4 million loans, with y-o-y growth of 161%. The value of total loans disbursed in October grew to ₹3,056 Cr ($407 million, y-o-y growth of 387%).
Paytm’s leadership in offline payments strengthened further with its total merchant subscription devices deployed increasing to 5.1 million. With its subscription-as-a-service model, the strong adoption of devices drives higher payment volumes, and subscription revenues, while increasing the funnel for merchant loan distribution.
Paytm had recently said in its earnings release, “Merchant subscriptions is an attractive profit pool for us, driving higher payment volumes, subscription revenues as well as merchant loan distribution.”
The company’s user engagement too was at its highest with its average monthly transacting users for October at 84 million, registering a growth of 33% y-o-y. This reflects the fact that more and more people are using the Paytm app.
The company’s founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma wrote a letter to shareholders as Paytm is close to one year of listing. Sharma further said that the company is aware of the expectations that Paytm carries, and they are on the path to profitability and free cash flows. “Our journey to build a scalable and profitable financial services business has just started,” he wrote.
Paytm in its recently announced Q2 FY23 financials had posted a 76% y-o-y growth in revenue to ₹1,914 crore. Meanwhile, the company’s losses were reduced by 11% on a sequential basis. The company’s contribution profit surged 224% y-o-y to Rs 843 crore. Talking about the company’s growth in the last quarter he wrote, “After our recent quarterly reports which showed strong operating leverage and reduction in EBITDA losses, we are now excited about the next year of our journey, as we get close to EBITDA profitability and free cash flow generation.”
Over the years, Paytm has become synonymous with mobile payments and is a pioneer for QR code-based payments. “In the past ten years, we have embedded our solutions to the last mile – digitising money and enabling small aspirational merchants, artisans, and solution providers to tap into the world of infinite possibilities,” he wrote.
Sharma further wrote that the payment revolution continues in India, with merchants and users enthusiastically adopting digital payment technology. The government incentives to UPI payments and merchants’ adoption of our devices and subscription product, is making payments increasingly monetizable and profitable for the company.
Talking about the company’s rapidly growing lending business which is now at an annualised run rate of ₹37,000 crores in the month of October, Sharma said, “In parallel, we are now scaling up lending distribution which can bring financial inclusion to hundreds of millions of people in our country. Due to the huge demand for lending in our country, our low penetration, and the compounding nature of our lending journey, we are extremely optimistic about the prospects of our lending business.”
For October, the total merchant GMV processed through Paytm aggregated to Rs 1.18 Lac Cr ($14 billion), marking a y-o-y growth of 42%, partly due to the festive season. “In our payments business, we continue to focus on profitable revenue and hence continue to optimize for profitable GMV,” said the company in the release.