INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
One 97 Communications reported widening of consolidated loss to Rs 473 croreDigital payments and financial services firm Paytm is expecting
to increase revenue and monetisation methods on its platform in the next few quarters, according to a top company official
Paytm Chairman and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma during an earnings call with analysts in the US said the company is seeing scale in system
deployment and non-UPI revenue, where merchant gives revenue charges, MDR (merchants discount rate) for payments and credit led financial
service, and provides the company with the next level of monetisation."We believe, we in the next few quarters will be able to not just
expand revenue but increase more number of monetisation methods and subsequently increase contribution margins in due course
Our team, myself and everyone is super energised seeing the opportunity in front of us and we are committed to executing and delivering
great results forward quarters," Sharma said.One 97 Communications, which operates under the Paytm brand name, on Saturday reported widening
of consolidated loss to about Rs 473 crore in the second quarter ended September 30, 2021, mainly on account of an increase in payment
processing charges.The company had posted a loss of Rs 436.7 crore in the same quarter a year ago, according to an exchange filing
The consolidated total income of Paytm increased around 64 per cent to Rs 1,086.4 crore during the reported quarter from Rs 663.9 crore in
the corresponding quarter of 2020-21."Our revenues have increased year-on-year, our revenues are increasing quarter-on-quarter
Impact of COVID, the scale of system deployment and scale in our non-UPI revenue, where merchant gives us revenue charges, MDR for payments
and credit led financial service, which gives us next level of monetisation is showing up," Sharma said.Paytm Group CFO and President Madhur
Deora during the call held on Monday evening said that the company is on the mission is to bring half a billion Indians to the mainstream
economy through technology-led financial services."You may have noticed some recently announced bank partnerships for point of sales (PoS)
There is an announcement with HDFC bank and there are also partnerships with other banks
This is giving us very strong momentum in the large format retailer market, the large format retail market in the offline world," Deora
said.Paytm has also claimed that it sees large merchants of competitors are now switching to its platform and it will now see a big
opportunity in capturing the mid-level market and startup community with its payment products.Recently platforms such as Myntra, Oyo,
Domino's and others partnered with the company for the "Paytm Token Gateway" service to carry out transactions without saving actual details
of debit and credit cards.Paytm executives in an earnings call last week said that they are seeing "recovery of high-margin commerce
business, and growth of cloud business" and increase in financial services revenue driven by the ramp-up in lending.According to Paytm
financial performance report for the second quarter ended September 30, 2021, its gross merchandise value (GMV) in the second quarter more
than doubled to Rs 1,95,600 crore from Rs 94,700 crore in the corresponding quarter of 2020-21.The company's average monthly transacting
users (MTU) during the reported quarter increased by 33 per cent on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis to 5.74 million, Paytm said in a statement
The revenue from payments and financial services grew 69 per cent on a year-on-year basis to Rs 842.6 crore, while commerce and cloud
services revenue grew by 47 per cent to Rs 243.8 crore.