For those readers not familiar with Paytm, it is a 2010 Delhi-based startup that originally offered a mobile payment platform and gateway for merchants and consumers, gradually expanding into broader financial services and more B2B participation. The company has some large investors, including Ant Financial (owners of Alipay). This referenced posting in YourStory discusses a recent addition to their services which is referred to simply as ‘Bulk Payments’:
‘With this, the company aims to simplify and digitise payments for both B2B and B2C players who make bulk payments on a regular basis to its vendors, employees, customers, and partners. For the financial year 2019-20, Paytm is aiming to process disbursements worth $1 billion, said a release….. The gateway provides an easy-to-use dashboard, an API solution, which can be easily integrated with merchant’s existing systems. Businesses can choose to transfer into various destinations including bank account, UPI (India’s real-time payments platform), and wallet. Further, they can send any amount into as many bank accounts. ‘
There has undoubtedly been a great focus on B2C disbursements during the past two years as we have seen large capitalization increases for companies such as Transferwise and Payoneer, just to name two, which market based on cross border capabilities.
What we did not read here is whether Paytm is planning to add cross border for bulk payments, as it is not mentioned. We assume that will be coming at some point, but currently, as far as we know, there has not been a scaled connection between two sovereign real-time systems. There are plans to accomplish this in ASEAN (and Australia) with interconnectivity enabled by SWIFT gpi, so things are not too far off we suspect.
In any event, the rapidly changing face of payments continues:
‘The company says the gateway is already enabled with modules such as beneficiary management, name validation service, and bulk disbursement among others…In April this year, the company also announced the launch of a recurring payment feature for merchants using Paytm’s payment gateway…The payment gateway also allows merchants to receive payments through different channels including email, SMS, and chat. The company claims that several large online businesses such as IRCTC, Zomato, OYO Rooms, Grofers, Swiggy, Bigbasket, andIdealeverage its payment gateway.’
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service
