With WhatsApp gearing itself to its digital payments service in India, Paytm is looking to take on the instant messaging giant with ‘Paytm Inbox’.
If one looks within the Indian context, Facebook-owned WhatsApp counts around 200 million active users in the country. WhatsApp’s efforts at introducing the digital payments facility within its app is still work in progress.
Paytm sort of ran a trial of the facility on its app, this festive season, called Paytm Lifafa, which basically enabled the members to gift their near and dear cash through their respective e-wallets. Paytm Inbox will be an advanced version of Paytm Lifafa.
Originally announced in August 2017, Inbox will also let them send texts, photos, videos, live locations and photos (captured through a camera built within the app). There is also a notification option, where users can access the latest offers and cashbacks on Paytm. The app also has cricket and trivia-based games to ensure user engagement.
Currently available only on Android, Inbox also lets users track orders and transaction updates
Paytm is reportedly keen to emulate the popular IM service WeChat of China. WeChat, apart from being the largest messenger service with 889 million active users, also runs a successful digital payment platform WeChat Pay.
According to an Inc42 report, Paytm is said to have a membership count of more than 230million and it has been a huge beneficiary of the government’s digital payments push aggravated by the demonetization late last year. The e-wallet recorded a 700% increase in the overall traffic while cash transactions within its app went up by a whopping 1000%. On the valuation and funding front also Paytm is ahead with its valuation being pegged at around $7billion and in the latest round of funding in May this year, Paytm received $1.7 million.
Independently, a report by Google and Boston Consulting Group has let out fabulous numbers as future predictions in this space. These include 520 million smartphone users in India by 2020 and the fintech market growing to $2.4 billion by that time (it is currently at half of this, $1.2 billion). And the digital payment business is being projected at $500 billion by 2020. No wonder, Paytm, WhatsApp, Hike, Amazon and Google are all rushing in to grab a share of the pie.