Fintech startup Paytm, operated by One97 Communications Ltd, on Monday said it has witnessed a 32% jump in average monthly transacting users to 85 million in the third quarter of financial year 2023.
The Noida-headquartered firm disbursed about 3.7 million loans worth Rs 3,665 crore ($443 million) during December, it said in an exchange filing. The amount of loan disbursal has grown about four-fold over the same month in FY22.
Paytm, which is India’s biggest fintech player, provides loans to its customers and merchant partners in partnerships with non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) Clix Capital, Aditya Birla Finance, Piramal Finance, Fullerton India and Hero FinCorp. It earns a commission based on the loans it issues to Paytm postpaid users and merchants.
For the third quarter, the loan distribution business saw a growth of over 4.5X with the fintech disbursing loans over 10.5 million worth Rs 9,958 crore.
Paytm also said it deployed another 1 million devices at merchant stores across the country during the last quarter, taking the total merchants subscribing for payment devices to 5.8 million, as of December 2022. The fintech firm provides these devices or soundboxes to its merchant partners on a subscription basis.
“With a focus on creating additional payment monetization, our focus on subscription services continues to expand,” it said,
Further, the gross merchandise volume processed by merchants on its platform grew by 38% to Rs 3.46 lakh crore ($42 billion) during the third quarter on a yearly basis.
“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.
Paytm widened its losses to Rs 571 crore for the September 2022 quarter, compared to a net loss of Rs 472.90 crore in the same period last year. Its revenue from operations for the second quarter of FY23 jumped 76% to Rs 1,914 crore on a year-on-year basis.
In a separate filing, the company said on Sunday Paytm Payments Bank received the regulator’s approval to appoint veteran banker Surinder Chawla as its Managing Director and chief executive. Mint first reported the development on Saturday.
