Santa’s come visiting Paytm! Its wallet size expected to increase tenfold in 2016

Paytm, the mobile payments and commerce firm headquartered in Noida is looking at the coming year with hopeful eyes. As per reports, it is expecting its 110 million wallet users to add about $500 million in their wallets in 2016, which means a tenfold rise from 2015.

"In 2015, we saw wallets become mainstream. Next year, as more and more businesses push marketing dollar spends to cashbacks and wallets, the recharge value and frequency will steadily increase," Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma told ET.

This projected figure doesn’t count cashbacks that the company offers its customers when they do e-commerce transactions via Paytm.
Sharma is expecting to see startups offering a lot of extras including loans and insurances built on top of wallets next year, which would help them competing with credit cards, if not replacing them.

As per existing norms set by the RBI, Paytm has to restrict its customers to Rs 10,000 wallet recharge per month on a mobile number and email ID verification. In order to do transactions above this amount, customers need to adhere to full Know Your Customer (KYC) norms, the process of which is like opening a bank account.

Paytm, which was started in 2010, is backed by China's giant Alibaba Group and affiliate Ant Financial, and faces competition from MobiKwik, FreeCharge, Airtel Money and PayU, all big names in the e-wallet business.

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