One97 Communications Ltd is planning to separate its e-commerce and payments businesses as part of plans to go head first with the payments bank platform. The company that counts Alibaba's Alipay and SAIF Partners as large shareholders will separate the payments business under a new company Paytm Payment Bank Ltd, in which the company's co-founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma will own majority (51 per cent) stake, he told Mint.
Sharma, was one of the 11 applicants shortlisted by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for an in-principle approval to get a payments bank licence. Payments bank is a new set of niche bank that would seek to expand financial inclusion in the country.
The new firm will be registered in the next three months and will issue mobile wallets in the future. The wallet licence with One97 will be rolled over to Paytm Payment. The new venture will have a separate leadership team and the company will hire around 2,500 people in couple of years for the same, Sharma told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, the e-commerce business will continue to be housed under One97 Communications.
Currently, One97 Communications has over 10.2 crore wallets and expects to have around 11.5 crore by December. Paytm has 80,000 merchants on its platform and is expecting to close the year with 100,000 after it allows zero-commission listings.
