Paytm hopes to achieve 500 million wallets by 2020; demonetisation likely to help

The demonetisation of high value currency denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 since 8 November has brought mobile wallet companies, including Paytm, back in the spotlight over a month or so. With the government’s thrust on digital payments transactions gaining traction, the Alibaba-backed Paytm has been in the forefront in driving the digital play. Hoping more and more people will shift to digital-based transactions going ahead, Paytm expects to reach 500 million wallets in next four to five years, said a Mint report. Recently, Paytm’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said the company has about 165 million e-wallet users.  “Rural customers are using Paytm more than its urban customers. The ratio of gap is 4:3:4 in tier two, three and people away from them V/S 3 in urban areas-top ten cities,” he claimed. Post the demonetisation exercise, the company said it has been witnessed multi-fold jump in transactions per day. “Earlier we used see 2.5 to 3 million transactions a day, if there was a great day we were crossing 3 million comfortably. Now we are always up 5 millions a day… also 6 millions a day…, said Sharma. Last week, digital payments platform Paytm also said it aims to become universal payments app across every bank, and is on its way to complete two billion transactions this year. “Today Paytm is on the way to complete 2 billion transactions this year. I personally did not expect 2016 to end on such number. Our numbers are at 2 billion transactions this year, which in turn will enable us to become really the transaction layer on top of every bank account,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a recent press meet. He also said Paytm wants to actually become the universal payments app across every bank account that exists there with  partnership UPI. Citing strong business prospects in the digital play, Vijay Shekhar Sharma last week sold one per cent of his shares in One97 Communications to its shareholders for about Rs 325 crore. At the end of March this year, Sharma held over 21 percent stake in One97 Communications. The latest sale would bring down his holding to over 20 percent. China’s Alibaba Group and its affiliate Ant Financial hold over 40 percent in One97 Communications. They had pumped in $680 million last year into the parent company of Paytm. However, the Chinese entity will not have a direct shareholding in the payments bank. Other investors of One97 Communications include SAIF Partners, Intel Capital and SAP Ventures. According to this Mint report, the China-based ecommerce giant Alibaba group had committed to infuse $575 million in Paytm. With PTI inputs