Paytm introduced UPI Lite in its Android app in beta last month. Shortly after, the company rolled out the functionality to all its Android users across the country enabling them to do smaller-value transactions of up to Rs 200 almost instantaneously without a PIN. On the sidelines of this development, we sat down for a conversation with Paytm’s Consumer CPO and Paytm Insider’s CEO, Shreyas Srinivasan, to understand the nuances around the adoption of UPI Lite and how UPI, as a platform, has affected Paytm’s core business. Also Read - NPCI says customers won’t be charged for UPI transactions
UPI Lite on iOS
Now, it’s worth noting that while Paytm has made UPI Lite available to all its Android users, iOS users are yet to get the update. During our conversation, Srinivasan shared that UPI Lite will be made available to iOS users within next two to three weeks. “We’re working on it. I think in the next two-three weeks you should have it on iOS as well,” he said. Also Read - UPI transactions over Rs 2,000 will be charged at 1.1 percent starting April 1
Importance of UPI Lite
During our conversation about UPI Lite, the Paytm executive also talked about the importance of UPI Lite as a service. He stated two reasons why UPI Lite is an important step in India’s digitisation journey. First is that it increases the success rate of UPI transactions. And two, it is a more concise representation of users’ finances, a functionality that the standard UPI transactions lack. This feature can come in handy, especially in the scenarios when users are printing a passbook or making an account of all of their spendings. Also Read - Paytm Wallet is now acceptable on all UPI QRs
“…there are peak periods, usually 6:30 to 7:30 when a lot of people do transactions. At this point of time there’s a lot of load on banks….That’s where we both, we and NPCI including everyone in the ecosystem understood that this is the time where we need to increase the overall success rate. And the way to increase the success rate is by having your balance stored outside the banks. And then during peak time you can use the balance outside of your bank account so that your bank account doesn’t get hit a lot. So that the stability and the success rate goes up. That’s what UPI Lite is,” the Paytm executive said.
“That’s what UPI Lite does. It allows you to have a better success rate even when there is critical load on banking infrastructure.”
“Two..What UPI Lite fixes is that it only shows you one debit and one credit transaction in your bank passbooks…So your bank passbook is simplified. Those are the two things where we are gung-ho. We see a lot of transactions under Rs 200. We’re very gung-ho that a substantial part of those transactions will move to UPI Lite,” he added.
UPI interoperability and its impact on Paytm
During our conversation, we also talked about the impact that UPI’s interoperability has had on Paytm. The Paytm executive told us that interoperability has been good for the company and that Paytm has seen a steady growth in the number of transactions in the past couple of months.
For the unversed, NPCI announced interoperability for UPI numbers earlier this year, which enabled UPI users to use any app as their default app for receiving payments and in turn gave them more freedom in terms of usage.
“…it’s really been positive for us…Anytime we had a phone number, which we couldn’t fulfil on Paytm, may now use the interoperability, it’s called the mapper, we use the mapper to fulfil the transaction. And we’ve seen that transaction numbers have steadily grown over the last three months,” he said.
“We haven’t seen any big switching because of interoperability, but what we have seen who were super active on Paytm do more,” he added.
Paytm e-wallet in the UPI era
Lastly, we also touched upon the subject of how UPI transactions and UPI Lite have affected Paytm’s core e-wallet business. Interestingly, Srinivasan shared that Paytm’s wallet business has grown despite the soaring popularity of UPI in India.
“The Paytm wallet business has actually grown every year…If you look at the Paytm wallet, the Paytm wallet other than what UPI Lite does, is now going to be interoperable, which means that you can now use the Paytm wallet to pay on any UPI, which now increases adoption,” Srinivasan told Techlusive.
“We feel that the Paytm app allows users the flexibility to choose the instrument that they want within the context of what they want to make the payment and we’ve seen Paytm wallet grow because we’ve specialised in a bunch of use-cases,” he added.
