Paytm’s Merchant Payment Leadership Helps It Earn Rs 182 Cr From UPI Incentives In FY23

*This is in partnership with BQ Prime BrandStudio

India’s leading mobile payments and financial services company Paytm’s leadership in UPI merchant payments has helped it generate meaningful revenue. The company, in its results for the quarter ended March 2023, revealed that it received UPI incentives from the government amounting to Rs 49 crore during the quarter and Rs 182 crore for the full financial year.

The Union Cabinet in January approved the incentive scheme for the promotion of RuPay debit cards and low-value peer-to-merchant (P2M) UPI transactions. Paytm is the leader in UPI merchant payment transactions, and the UPI incentive received by the company has doubled from the previous fiscal’s Rs 90 crore. 

Paytm UPI has been driving the country’s digital transaction volumes in recent years. The company’s rapid deployment of low-cost QR codes to cover every corner of India has brought underpenetrated merchant segments that once preferred cash-based payments into the digital payments fold. As of March 2023, the company had a registered merchant base of 3.35 crore.

According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, its incentive scheme will also promote UPI Lite as user-friendly digital payment solutions and enable further deepening of digital payments in the country, across all sectors and segments of the population. As the pioneer of mobile and QR payments in India, Paytm was the first app to launch UPI Lite in India. Since its launch in February 2023, Paytm has enabled UPI Lite for more than 55 lakh users.

Merchants and users prefer Paytm for UPI because of the company’s industry-best transaction success rates. UPI has also emerged as one of the key customer and merchant acquisition channels for Paytm. Paytm has built a scalable UPI revenue model by focusing on merchant payments and offering subscription-based payment devices like Paytm Soundbox and upselling financial services. Today, it is the leader in offline payments with the most payment devices deployed. It has further strengthened its leadership with 71 lakh devices deployed as of April 2023, an increase of 3 lakh devices during the month.

Led by the growth in gross merchandise value, higher subscription revenues, and growth of loans distributed through its platform, Paytm reported a 51% YoY revenue growth in the last quarter to Rs 2,334 crore. It posted an operating profit for the second consecutive quarter with Ebitda before ESOP cost expanding to Rs 234 crore.