Losses Mount For India’s Paytm Parent One97

Paytm’s parent One97 Communications posted $549 million in net losses for the fiscal year ending in March, according to reports on Monday (Sept. 9).

Losses widened 165 percent over last year’s loss of $206 million in the same period. Regardless, Paytm is still going to invest $3 billion in its business over the next two years and is planning to go public.

In a statement to reporters, Paytm said it has been investing $1 billion per year for the last two years to “expand the payments ecosystem in our country.” 

“We believe India is at the inflection point of digital payments, and Paytm’s sole focus is towards solving the merchant payments and offering them financial services. We will invest Rs 20,000 crore ($2.7 billion) in the next two years towards achieving this,” a company spokesperson said.

Revenue is up $448 million, slightly more than last year’s $423 million. Paytm has also accumulated more debt, $96 million, One97 Communications told investors in its annual report.

Earlier this month, Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said Paytm is going public in the next two years, the article said. 

Paytm has raised over $2 billion from SoftBank, Alibaba and Berkshire Hathaway and is still the largest mobile wallet app provider in India.

After being a usage leader in India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Paytm experienced a sharp decline in transactions in July, while Google Pay and PhonePe have seen usage skyrocket.

UPI is starting to become the favored way to pay for smaller retail transactions in India, with around 143 banks live on the payments network. Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm accounted for almost 790 million UPI transactions in July, the sources told the news outlet. 

Paytm saw just under 140 million transactions, about a 15 percent share. Conversely, Google Pay and PhonePe had approximately 300 million transactions each, more than a 35 percent share. 

Managed by the National Payments Corporation of India, UPI launched in India in 2016 and is fast becoming a payments game-changer as usage continues to soar. At the end of 2018, for instance, Paytm’s 137 million transactions accounted for a 33 percent share of all UPI usage.