Big Paytm push! Digital payments company to dole out incentives for kirana retail stores

In a bid to penetrate the interiors of Indian territory, Paytm — a fintech firm that deals in digital payments — announced on Thursday its intent to push peer-to-peer UPI transactions to offline merchant payments at retail kirana stores. The fintech firm is looking to partner with over 20 million retail kirana stores, enabling them to accept all digital payment modes including UPI, wallet and cards.

Speaking on the move Deepak Abbot, Senior Vice President at Paytm said, "Paytm will invest money in offline merchant expansion instead of driving incentive led P2P transactions. Our offline merchants create high-frequency usage and an important use-case for Paytm consumers." 

UPI P2P payments are often done by users to gain some extra money. On Paytm, the UPI users are already the ones who have been using a large host of Paytm services for long and don`t require cash backs to make payments.

"To further help merchants get better access to capital and provide more financial security Paytm will invest in lending and insurance, rather than on P2P payments," the company said in a written press statement. 

Through its payment ecosystem, Paytm has already created a network effect with over 5 billion transactions in 2018-19. It also claims to have 12 million merchant partners accepting payments through Paytm QR, which accepts all digital payment instruments such as UPI, wallets, cards and netbanking. (With inputs from IANS)