The growth of Paytm
Paytm is India's largest mobile payments and commerce platform. It allows you to pay bills and make online transactions.
Wikipedia states that Paytm is an Indian e-commerce payment system and financial technology company, based out of Noida India.
Paytm was founded in August 2010 with an initial investment of $2 million by its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma in Noida, a region adjacent to India's capital New Delhi.
It started off as a prepaid mobile and DTH recharge platform and later added data card, postpaid mobile, and landline bill payments in 2013.
By January 2014, the company launched the Paytm Wallet, and the Indian Railways and Uber added it as a payment option. It launched into e-commerce with online deals and bus ticketing.
In 2015, it unveiled more use-cases like education fees, metro recharges, electricity, gas, and water bill payments. It also started powering the payment gateway for Indian Railways.
In 2016, Paytm launched movies, events, and amusement parks ticketing as well as flight ticket bookings and Paytm QR. Later that year, it launched rail bookings and gift cards.
Paytm's registered user base grew from 11.8 million in August 2014 to 104 million in August 2015. Its travel business crossed $500 million in annualised GMV run rate while booking 2 million tickets per month.
In 2017, Paytm became India's first payment app to cross over 100 million app downloads. The same year, it launched Paytm Gold, a product that allowed users to buy as little as ₹1 of pure gold online.
It also launched Paytm Payments Bank and 'Inbox', a messaging platform with in-chat payments among other products. By 2018, it started allowing merchants to accept Paytm, UPI and card payments directly into their bank accounts at 0% charge.
It also launched the 'Paytm for Business' app which is now called Business with Paytm App, allowing merchants to track their payments and day-to-day settlements instantly.
This led its merchant base to grow to more than 7 million by March 2018. And as per now Paytm became India's most popular payment app.
But with popularity came a lot of complaints about scams and frauds against Paytm.