Fintech firm Paytm, which is backed by Chinese major Alibaba, on Thursday said it plans to invest ₹10,000 crore over the next three years in its banking and financial services business.
“We will invest at least ₹10,000 crore in our banking and financial services in the next three years. We hope to get the final approval for our payments bank operations soon, so that we can roll out services,” Paytm founder and CEO Vishal Shekhar Sharma said.
These will include Paytm Banks, wallet and financial services. He added that till now the company has invested more than ₹3,200 crore for its operations. The Noida-based company, which had 218 million mobile wallet users at the end of March 2017, is also learnt to be in talks to raise funds.
Paytm on Thursday also announced partnership with MMTC-PAMP to allow consumers to purchase 24K 999.9 purity gold on its platform and store it in MMTC-PAMP's secure vaults free of charge. The company said customers can invest as low as one rupee.
Customers will have the option of getting gold accumulated over one gram to their homes or sell it back online.
Asked about the issue of capital dumping, which has been raised by firms such as Flipkart and Ola in the past, Mr. Shekhar said that “risk appetite” foreign investors is different from domestic investors.
“I am all for domestic investments. I want every domestic rich person to start putting money in start-ups. I truly call upon on them. India's old economy companies should bring that capital back to put money in start-ups.”
Why do we need outside investors when we can have people from inside (the nation),” he added.
Mr Shekhar further added that they expect to process 4.5 billion transactions on the platform this fiscal. This will be a three time increase from 1.5 billion transactions on its platform last year. "We have seen significant growth and this year too, we expect to see a manifold growth to 4.5 billion”transactions. A significant part of this growth is coming from tier II and beyond cities," Mr Sharma added.
He further stated that cities like Jaipur, Sonipat, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Durgapur were among the fastest growing for the company.
