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WhatsApp Pay can Gobble Up Paytm with its Beyond P2P Platform

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Indian digital payment industry is booming, and with the platforms like Paytm, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay, people have got many choices to opt for. On 24th April Facebook-owned WhatsApp also announced that it is going to launch a digital payment service, WhatsApp Pay, in India, giving a clear message to the leaders of digital payment, that they need to brace up for a big competition.

WhatsApp-payments-india
Image Source: thenextweb.com

For now, Paytm, an almost decade-old company, backed by Alibaba, is the biggest local digital payment service in India. On the same league, Amazon has also launched its payment service recently, Amazon Pay UPI for Android customers for peer-to-peer payments, whereas, Google Pay (earlier Google Tez) has got a hold on a share of 45 million users, operating $81 billion in transactions in March. There has been also news from Apple of planning to launch its Apple Pay service in India soon.

Though Paytm has been ruling the Indian market for the past decade, with the rise of other services including Google Pay and Amazon Pay, it has become easy to believe that Whats App Pay can easily influence people with its payment services.

Since WhatsApp has been the most loved app in India, so with a user base of over 300 million in India, it won’t be tough for WhatsApp Pay to challenge the existing digital payment services. In fact, its parent company, Facebook has got additional Indian userbase of over 300 million people, which is huge, as Paytm alone entertains only 230 million users. This way launching a peer-to-peer UPI based payment service will easily attract most of its users as it will be easy for them to transact on WhatsApp.

“Indians love WhatsApp and will love the convenience of transacting through the app. I foresee a trend wherein entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises start embracing and using WhatsApp Pay. This will contribute to, and increase their creditworthiness. In turn, this trend will enable them to easily borrow credit from formal sources, such as banks.” Prabhu Ram, head of the Industry Intelligence Group at CMR, said in the report.

According to WhatsApp, in an app test, over 1 million people were able to send and receive money in a safe and secure manner. The company has also told the Supreme Court on May 3 that it will be complying with the RBI norms before starting its payment service in India, and it is willing to contribute to India’s financial inclusion goals.

Paytm Partners with Soft Bank to Enter Japan with the QR-based Payment App PayPay

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It has been almost eight years since Paytm has been around helping people with their digital payments. It became the most used digital payment app in India, way before the PM Modi’s Digital India campaign even started. After gaining huge success in India, Paytm is all set to approach other countries with its amazing digital payment technology. Last year, during the launch of Paytm in Canada, the founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, had indicated that the company is also planning to expand in Japan and Europe.

paytm
Image Source: paytm.com

Collaborating with the SoftBank and Yahoo Japan Corporation, Paytm has developed a similar app named as PayPay, that, it has launched for the people of Japan. The PayPay app is based on the QR technology, that users can use on their smartphones for their payment settlements. The users can easily transfer their money from the bank accounts to the PayPay app wallet and use the wallet for the payments.

“Paytm is the leader in smart electronic payment services in India, and has achieved great success. It is a great strength to introduce Paytm’s high technology and solution, to PayPay, and I am confident that it will greatly contribute to the expansion of users in Japan,” said Ichiro Nakayama, the President & Representative Director CEO of PayPay Corporation.

Paytm has used the same strategy for its new client base in Japan as it has used in India at its initial stage. Paytm, through the PayPay app, will provide its users with various offers, including the ones with cash back. The user will also receive 500 yen, after the successful completion of their registration with the app, through a valid Japanese mobile number. Also, PayPay is providing the users with free of cost transactions till September 2021.

Paytm already have 300 million customers and over 9.5 million offline merchants registered with the app, in India. After the launch of PayPay, the Soft Bank and the Yahoo Japan are intended to draw their client base to register with PayPay, and Yahoo Japan will also shut down its Yahoo Wallet, to integrate PayPay on Yahoo! Japan.

MobiKwik to take on Paytm with new funding round

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Paytm, India’s leading wallet and payments company now backed by high-profile investors like Alibaba and Softbank, has always been on the top when it comes to digital payment market in India. Call it the first mover’s advantage at work. On top of that, last year’s demonetization came like a sweet spring for the whole online transaction business in India. Paytm was the biggest gainer of demonetization among all wallet businesses in India. But, there is another wallet and payments solution that is growing quickly, MobiKwik.

MobiKwik- the brand which focuses entirely on mobile payments and stands second to Paytm in India- is pretty confident that the company can convert their unidirectional approach towards online payments into an advantage when competition is focusing more towards diversifying into other fields like e-commerce and banking.

Recently, in a talk with TechCrunch, Co-founder Upasana Taku confirmed that they are currently in a negotiation for an investment of $100 million-$150 million which is going to come at a valuation of $1 billion. Taku declined, when asked about the major names her company is going to receive funds from, but made it clear that there is only one major strategic investor involved along with some financial institutions. Expect the round to be closed in next couple of months, putting the company into much valued tech unicorns club.

Well, that’s a lot of money to put into a strategy and we hope MobiKwik has a polished one as they are going against Paytm; top of the league. As of now, plan is to invest around $45 million on expanding the brand’s presence and offices to new users and merchants.

Paytm is pushing its business into e-commerce, influenced by Alibaba’s presence. That’s not it, they are stepping into digital banking as well and if the sources are correct, there is yet another project which is going to launch soon and drives heavily from Chinese market.

“It is reneging on payments while it is pushing bank and e-commerce services. Something’s got to give, it is not possible to do justice on 10 different verticals.” She told to Techcrunch. She also quoted Ola money’s example to justify her statement. “I don’t see Ola Money accepted in many places”

Upasana Taku  also opened up about the company’s future goal of providing financial services like insurance, loans, and investing alongside partners, all via co-branded wallet app. Today digital payment accounts for just 15 percent of the total amount of $1.5 trillion in India and she believes that number can increase up to even 70 percent in next few years.

CEO who once struggled to speak English now commands $3 Billion Company

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Being not able to speak or being fluent in English, a global business language that binds billions of people will certainly lower your confidence and may become a source of  humiliation at the work place and business meetings. You might consider this shortcoming as your biggest weakness to professional growth.

However, some dare to defy the set standards of society & business world. Those who have the dream to do something bigger in life, keep their head down, face the challenges with courage and keep working towards the bigger dream.

One such person is Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of PayTM, a $3 billion e-commerce and payments company from India.

Winners do things differently
Vijay Shekhar Sharma was born in the city of Aligarh (UP), India to a humble family. With no bigger life goal than to complete his engineering degree and land up in a job and serve his family, he left Aligarh after completing his schooling to pursue an engineering degree at Delhi College of Engineering.

Vijay entered the Delhi College of Engineering with great enthusiasm and zeal at the age of 15. Vijay who had studied all his life in Hindi medium wasn’t able to understand a word in classroom where lectures were delivered only in English. Even his classmates preferred English to converse. Vijay shifted to back benches to avoid attention and even started to bunk lectures.  This was testing time for him but then Vijay decided to take this thing head on and win the battle. He started to read English magazines & dictionaries borrowed from others.

He read lot of English business magazines during his college time. This arouse his curiosity about internet and software.

Entrepreneurship is bed of thorns
Inspired from Yahoo and Sabeer Bhatia, Vijay launched a company named Xs while in college. He along with his batch mates built a website that had web directories, web-guided services and a search engine. Vijay also got seed money from a Angel Investor, a New Mexico-based venture capital fund. Vijay sold the company in 1999 to Living Media India (India Today Group) for half a million dollars. Vijay bought his first color TV with the money and also paid of his father’s loan.

From One97 to PayTM
Vijay co-founded One97 with Rajiv Shukla, a mobile VAS company in 2000. But in 2001 company got hit by post 9/11 market crises. His partner left and Vijay was left with no money. He was forced to travel in buses and even on foot to save money for dinner & tea. He had to take a job amid family pressure to get settled in life. After few months Vijay left the job to get back to entrepreneurship.

Vijay continued with One97 and lunched services like mobile astronomy, music messaging, ringtones etc. and got series A and series B funding.

In 2010, Vijay launched PayTM, an online mobile recharge platform. Vijay in 2011 coined the idea of mobile payments to company board but board wasn’t convinced. But, a confident Vijay offered to put in $2 million of his own equity to launch PayTM. RBI’s  approval of semi closed wallet in 2012-13 paved the way for the launch PayTM payment wallet and marketplace. In 2014-15 PayTM secured a funding to the tune $100 million in series A from Alibaba, Alipay and SAIF.

PayTM is now doing an average transactions worth Rupees 30 million on daily basis and is backed by industry legends like Ratan Tata. It has a network of 16,000 online and 10,000 offline registered merchants and is projected to increase to 100,000 merchants. Currently, PayTM is valued at $ 3 billion after the latest funding round of $680 million from Ant Financial of Alibaba. Recently PayTM has launched in-store payments from wallet as well.

With the personal experience of hard achieved success, Vijay refrains to call the staff at his office as employees, he prefers to call them as colleagues or teammates understanding their contribution also towards growth of the company. He also distributed 4% of his equity worth $120 million to his team.

The meteoric success came to Vijay with all his own hard work and sheer determination. Rise of a man with humble background against all odds and hurdles like language, early debacle of business and a reluctant board at One97,  he stands as an inspiration and attestation behind the saying “A man makes his own destiny”.

 “To the winners, who won because they didn’t give up.”- Vijay Shekhar Sharma