Even more than three years after demonetisation and all-out efforts to make most transactions through electronic, cash is still king, as it thrives in a digital India, said fintech start-up Paytm founder Vijay Sekhar Sharma.
“While cashless economy is not possible in India, less cash economy will be in the future. Less cash is the only solution, not the elimination of cash,” Sharma told IANS in an interview after unveiling an all-in-one payment gateway on Tuesday.
India’s leading financial services company Paytm has today announced that
‘Business Khata’ has become India’s fastest-growing e-ledger service. As more kirana
stores are adopting digital transactions to avoid cash, Paytm has recorded over Rs.
1500 crores of payments since the launch of its Business Khata services in January
this year. During the ongoing lockdown, the service has witnessed 4x growth both in terms of new merchants and the total number of daily transactions.
Paytm has revolutionized the offline payments with it’s QR based merchant
payments. The company launched Business Khata to enable kirana store partners to
maintain digital ledgers of all their customer transactions including cash and credit (udhaar). Using this service, a million merchants have moved digitally and have also learned to set payment due dates for credit transactions & send automated
reminders. With this, the customers receive a notification with their billing history, and they are able to make payments through the same link through their preferred mode of Paytm Wallet, Paytm UPI, cards, or net banking.
Sajal Bhatnagar, Vice President at Paytm said, “Paytm Business Khata has become
an essential service for kirana stores as it automates their manual cash
collection. It has helped them to significantly improve cash flow and clear their sales outstanding digitally. We are overwhelmed with the growth achieved and will work towards educating more kiranas about its convenience.”
Paytm Business Khata service is absolutely free for merchants and they can
download the ‘Paytm for Business’ app to use this service. They can also download
reports for easy verifications and to track daily sales growth; thereby improving
overall business efficiency.
The One97 Communications-owned Paytm aims to help SMEs streamline and digitise their business activities using its new solutions, which enhance the overall efficiency of both accepting and making payments.
Paytm has a data bank of over 200 million saved cards and bank accounts, a feature which enables partner apps to shorten transaction times and propel faster conversions while using the all-in-one payment gateway.