Wallet 'curtain-raiser', payments bank will be 'show': Paytm

Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Friday said that the firm's mobile wallet business was only a curtain-raiser and the payments bank would be the main show.

"We should be a bank (payments bank) by this month-end. Wallet was a curtain-raiser for our business. Payments bank will be the show," Sharma said here at the India Today Conclave.

Ruling out competition with brick and mortar traditional banks, he said that the company does not need to compete with them.

Paytm targets to reach a customer base of 500 million by 2020.

Post-demonetisation, Paytm saw a surge in its customers owing to the digitalisation push by the government.

Adding that start-ups were now being acknowledged as business models, he said, "With Start-up India, it is being celebrated. Talent is coming in, to work at the start-ups," he said.

Sharma said that technology cannot be undermined and in the next two-three years the country should have 400-500 million smartphone users.

"Smartphones have not reached people because telecom network at... places was not there. It's a problem of telecom network, not of costs or technology," he said.

--IANS

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