Paytm extends ’Postpaid’ lending service to kiranas, offline retail outlets
- Paytm’s ‘Postpaid’ service can be used to buy groceries, milk and other essentials from neighbourhood kirana stores and at retail destinations as well, including Reliance Fresh, Haldiram, Apollo Pharmacy, Croma, Shoppers Stop
BENGALURU: Digital payments firm Paytm has expanded the scope of its consumer lending product Paytm Postpaid to offline retail and kirana stores. This service will help users eliminate the need to withdraw cash to meet monthly household expenses, the company said.
Kiranas and neighbourhood stores had remained functional during the harshest phase of the covid-19 lockdowns, pushing many technology firms to look at innovating products to tap this segment.
Payment firms including PhonePe and Google Pay allowed users to check for operational stores on their platforms in the lockdown. Recently, Mastercard partnered with Axis Bank to launch a ‘SoftPOS’ solution that allows offline merchants to use their smartphones as a point of sale device.
Paytm’s ‘Postpaid’ service can be used to buy groceries, milk and other essentials from neighbourhood kirana stores and at retail destinations as well, including Reliance Fresh, Haldiram, Apollo Pharmacy, Croma, Shoppers Stop, among others. Paytm Postpaid is available to limited customers of Paytm as if now. It plans to add 4 million customers to this service.
It has also extended the service to various bill payments facilities available on Paytm, shopping on Paytm Mal, and for payments at various online apps including Domino's, Tata Sky, Pepperfry, HungerBox, Patanjali, Spencer's, among others.
Paytm isn’t the only payment platform betting big on its credit line service.
In April, Amazon India through its payment arm, Amazon Pay, had launched ‘Amazon Pay Later’, a virtual line of credit to eligible customers shopping on Amazon.in and partnered with digital lending startup Capital Float and Karur Vysya Bank for this offering.
Apart from adding more use-cases, Paytm said it has increased credit limit for ‘PostPaid’ products up to ₹1,00,000 monthly from ₹60,000 earlier to enable payment for large items such as furniture and consumer electronics among others.
"Paytm Postpaid is our mission to provide access to credit to every Paytm user...We are excited to expand this service for payments at kirana and online stores that play an important role in the whole neighbourhood and online shopping experience. We will keep expanding the offering to include more and more Paytm users," said Amit Nayyar, president at Paytm.
At present, Postpaid is offered in partnership with non-banking finance partners including Clix Capital and Arthimpact Digital Loans Pvt. Ltd.
Along with expanding the use-cases for the product, Paytm has introduced three variants of the Postpaid product - Lite, Delite and Elite, depending on the credit limit.
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First Published:8 Jun 2020, 09:20 AM IST
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