Paytm, one of India’s most widely used mobile wallets, has added TV and games in an effort to keep users' eyes on its app as long as possible.
Processing Content
It's the latest sign that Paytm's success comes not just from payments, but from its ability to transform its app into a larger marketplace. And just like Amazon offers streaming TV and movies to keep users paying for Prime memberships, Paytm is adding media to make its ecosystem as compelling as possible.
Employees work at their desks at the One97 Communications Ltd. headquarters in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, on Thursday, May 14, 2015. One97, which operates PayTM, think they have an edge as the country is now in the midst of a smartphone boom, and younger Indians are shunning branches and turning to apps for their banking needs, mirroring global trends. Photographer: Kuni Takahashi/Bloomberg
Kuni Takahashi/Bloomberg
The transformation is also a sign of the influence of the massive Chinese online marketplace Alibaba, which is an investor in Paytm. Alibaba's payments affiliate, Ant Financial, operates the Alipay wallet.
According to The Times of India, the platform aims to further strengthen Paytm’s relationship with its customers. The company will continue to offer services that will encouraging everyday usage.
In China, mobile payment apps like AliPay and WeChat Pay are thriving in part to their integration into people’s lifestyle. Alipay users in China can hail taxis, message friends and family or even look up restaurants.
“Alipay is looking to help Paytm develop a marketplace where customers come to it for pretty much everything — including payments,” said Zilvinas Bareisis, a senior analyst at Celent.
There is a particular niche in India for integrated mobile payment technology. In November, 2016 India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi recalled 86% of the country’s total currency from circulation to boost digital payments and cut down on counterfeiting. Paytm was one of the companies that stood to benefit most from this action.
However, Paytm is not the only game in town, Bareisis said. It has competition in Google Pay, Apple Pay and Facebook's WhatsApp, to name a few.
The U.S. has seen a similar trend of payment apps blending with other mobile services. PayPal's Venmo can attribute much of its success to its design echoing that of a social media app; and Facebook and Apple are embedding P2P payments into their messaging apps rather than marketing them as standalone financial products.
Paytm did not immediately return a request for comment.
Housing advocates and compliance firms are suing to block a rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that they say guts the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
The Federal Reserve Board governor is the latest Fed official to embrace the prospect of tighter monetary policy in response to rapidly rising prices that have taken hold in recent years.
The brokerage fintech launched agentic trading and an agentic credit card today that will allow AI agents to trade equities and make credit card purchases on customers' behalf. It comes just weeks after OpenAI rolled out its own personal finance tool.
The Canadian lender's U.S. plan involved selling branches and jettisoning certain noncore relationship loan portfolios. BMO is now positioned to achieve its stateside return on equity target, CEO Darryl White said.
