Paytm loss widens to Rs 778.5 crore in Q3, revenue jumps 89%

Published by Aswini Vetriselvan — 06-11-2022 01:06:58 PM

Digital payments company Paytm operator One 97 Communications‘ consolidated loss widened to Rs 778.5 crore in the quarter ended December 2021, against Rs 535.5 crore loss posted in the year-ago period, though there was a significant increase in the topline.

The loss for the September 2021 quarter was Rs 473.5 crore, said the company in its BSE filing.

Consolidated revenue from operations grew by 89 percent to Rs 1,456.1 crore for December 2021 quarter, against Rs 772 crore recorded in the corresponding period of the last fiscal. The sequential increase in topline was 34 percent.

“Strong growth is driven by an increase in merchant payments processed through MDR (merchant discount rate) bearing instruments (Paytm Wallet, Paytm bank account, other banks netbanking, debit and credit cards), disbursements of loans on platform and recovery of commerce business from Covid impact,” Paytm said in its BSE filing on Friday.

“The QoQ growth was driven by the higher festive season demand, particularly in online and offline merchant business,” it said.

Revenue from payment services to consumers increased by 60 percent YoY to Rs 406 crore, driven by growth in transaction volumes of Paytm payment instruments and the introduction of new use-cases.

Revenue from payment services to merchants was up 117 percent YoY to Rs 586 crore driven by MDR-bearing instrument GMV growth, new large partnerships in payment gateway services, and growth in device subscriptions. The growth was also supported by incentives received from partner banks for various payment partnerships.

Revenue from financial services and others grew by 201 percent YoY to Rs 125 crore in Q3FY2022, said the company, adding revenue from commerce and cloud services went up by 64 percent YoY to Rs 339 crore in December 2021 quarter.

Paytm clocked 37 percent year-on-year growth in average monthly transacting users (MTU), the number of unique users with at least one successful payments transaction in a month, at 64.4 million in the quarter ended December 2021, said the company.

Gross merchandise value (GMV) for Q3FY2022 was Rs 2.5 lakh crore, up by 123 percent YoY, and its GMV from processing payments through MDR (merchant discount rate) bearing instruments grew 77 percent YoY, it added

Gross merchandise value is the amount processed on the platform when a customer is making a payment to a merchant using any instrument.

The company does process payments from all instruments (which include Paytm payment instruments, net-banking, credit and debit cards, UPI) and earns MDR on the transactions where payment is made through MDR-bearing instruments.

Paytm said the number of consumers on its platform was now over 35 crore and its merchant base has expanded to 2.49 crore, up from 2 crore a year ago. “Customers are showing greater retention and higher engagement (measured by average GMV and transaction per customer).”