Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and its financial services subsidiary Ant Financial have increased their stake in popular and growing Indian mobile payment service provider, Paytm will an undisclosed investment. According to reports, the new deal will increase the stake of the Chinese companies to 40%. Paytm recently reached 100 million mobile wallet users and now facilitates over 75 million monthly mobile payment transactions with both set to rise exponentially in the near future.
Commenting on the investment, Eric Jing, president of Ant Financial Services Group said,
“Ant Financial has worked seamlessly with Paytm in the past few months and our technical teams have developed significant improvements on the user experience for Indian consumers. Ant Financial and Paytm will collaborate to capture mobile payment opportunities in India. We believe that Paytm, as a leader in this field, is best equipped to build a mobile payment ecosystem in the country.”
With Alibaba’s strong mobile payment expertise via Alipay as well as a need to expand successfully beyond China the deal with Paytm makes a lot of sense and could ensure that Alibaba becomes not only a major e-commerce player but mobile wallet and payment service provider in what could be two of the world’s largest economies down the line.
Overview by Tristan Hugo-Webb, Associate Director, Global Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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