NEW DELHI: Homegrown digital wallet and online payments company Paytm on Thursday announced that Paytm Payments Bank account holders can now avail physical debit cards from the Paytm app. The payments bank already provides digital debit cards to its account holders.“We knew that we had to launch debit card in physical form. We were waiting and running a pilot. Now people can go and take money out of an ATM from the card,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder, Paytm and One97 Communication, told Express on the sidelines of the 12th ndia Digital Summit here on Thursday.
According to Shankar, the number of account holders will be less than that of digital card holders. “The primary obligation of our belief is that we should drive digital transaction, so we launched the digital card. The percentage of people taking the physical is less, around 10 per cent of the account holders. Percentage-wise, it is not big but number-wise it is huge,” he added.
The company will come out with loyalty programmes for physical cars holders in the months to come. The card can be used just like any other debit / ATM card, be it withdrawing cash from ATMs or shopping at stores that accept plastic cards.
However, users will have to pay Rs 120 to get the card.Shankar said that Paytm saw a record 255 million transaction (in all categories) in December 2017. The company expects year 2018 to be even bigger. The Alibaba-backed firm has been forming new ventures with other banks to promote Payments Bank in the country.Paytm has committed to investing Rs 3,000 crore over the next three years to establish 10,000 offline consumer-banking touch points.