Paytm to hire 10,000 agents to expand offline merchant network

Mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm will hire over 10,000 agents to expand offline merchant network to over 20 lakh touch-points by the end of the current fiscal. Currently, the Alibaba-backed firm has about 4,000 such agents and over one lakh offline merchants on its platform. “As millions of consumers across India have taken to using their Paytm Wallets to transact offline, our biggest opportunity is to be available in every town and city in the country. We want to reach there faster, looking to further strengthen our onboarding teams as we continue to build India’s biggest payments network,” Paytm Senior Vice President Amit Sinha said. Brick-and-mortar merchants and other online-to-offline sectors present a huge opportunity for digital payment companies, especially in the wake of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes being demonetised. Various reports and industry experts believe payment volume and transaction sizes via digital platform is expected to grow manifold in the coming months. Paytm said its platform saw an overwhelming 435 percent  increase in overall traffic within hours of the Prime Minister’s announcement. PTI