Paytm, operated by One97 Communications Ltd, on Monday said that its lending and offline payments verticals saw impressive growth in the October-November period. The company saw a 150% rise in loan distribution to 6.8 million loans from 2.7 million in the period a year earlier, it said in a stock exchange filing.
The annualised run rate of its loan disbursals reached Rs 39,000 crore (close to $4.8 billion) in November, up from Rs 34,000 crore ($4.1 billion) in September.
The value of loans disbursed grew 374% year-on-year in the October-November period to Rs 6,292 crore ($774 million) from Rs 1328 crore in two months ending November 2021.
The Noida-headquartered company currently has 5.5 million merchants now paying subscriptions for payment devices. It had around 1.6 million merchants till November 2021.
“With our subscription as a service model, the strong adoption of devices drives higher payment volumes and subscription revenues, while increasing the funnel for our merchant loan distribution,” the company said.
The fintech giant also saw the number of monthly transacting users (MTU) increasing steadily, growing 33% year-on-year to 84 million in the October-November period. The app had around 80 million MTU in September 2022 quarter.
Also, the total merchant GMV (gross merchandise value) processed through Paytms’ platform for the two months ended November 2022 aggregated to Rs 2.28 lakh crore, marking a year-on-year growth of 37%, from Rs 1.67 lakh crore in the same period a year ago.
“Our focus over the past few quarters continues to be on payment volumes that generate profitability for us, either through net payments margin or from direct upsell potential,” the company said.
Last week, the company announced that it will be discussing its first-ever buyback in a meeting of the board of directors on 13 December. “Paytm believes that given the company’s prevailing liquidity/ financial position, a buyback may be beneficial for our shareholders,” the company had said last week.
