Payworld eyeing 5 lakh retail touchpoints in 3 years

Fintech firm Payworld is planning to increase its retail touchpoints in rural and semi-urban areas to 5 lakh from the current 2 lakh in the next three years to cash in on the increase in digital transactions.

It offers services such as domestic money remittance, mobile and DTH recharges, transport reservation, besides utility bill collections, digital wallets, cash withdrawal points, and assisted e-commerce.

Payworld is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Payworld Money, which is an RBI-approved prepaid instrument (PPI) issuer.

"We are in the process of increasing our digital footprint and increase the number of retail touchpoints to 5 lakh over the next 24-36 months," said Praveen Dhabhai, chief operating officer of Payworld.

He said the company will appoint more agents to expand its reach in the rural and semi-urban areas of the country.

According to him, the agents, which are mainly small shopkeepers, earn anywhere between Rs 5,000 and Rs 20,000 a month by installing the touchpoints.

Talking about the challenges, Dhabhai said fintech companies also should be allowed to use Aadhaar e-KYC for verification of customers.

He also said KYC through physical documents is cumbersome and hinders rapid expansion of digital payment ecosystem, especially in rural areas.

The e-KYC verification was earlier allowed but discontinued following a court order.

Dhabhai said the widespread growth of the digital payments is due to the national acceptance of digital mode of payments throughout the country.

He said that after demonetisation, there have been several policy and digital infrastructure amendments including goods and services tax, financial inclusion and new payment systems such as Aadhaar-enabled payments and UPI that further boosted the digital payments sector.

According to an RBI's vision document, the number of digital transactions is expected to increase more than four times to 8,707 crore in December 2021.