Paytm Payments Bank turns profitable in second year of operation

Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPB)  has posted profit to the tune of Rs 19 crore within second year of its operation in fiscal 2019. The bank had reported  loss of Rs 20.7 crore for the fiscal ended March, 2018,

PPB, which was incorporated in August 2016, formally began its operations in 2017.

Satish Kumar Gupta, MD and CEO of Paytm Payments Bank, said the bank performed "exceptionally well" in the last year. He claimed that PPB was the first payments bank in the country to announce profit, that too within two years of its operations.

As of April 2019, the bank has more than Rs 500 crore deposits in its savings account.

PPB claims to lead mobile banking transactions with over 19 per cent market share as of March 2019. Nearly a third of the total mobile banking transactions in India are powered by PPB and it processes over Rs 3 lakh crore worth of digital transactions on an annualised basis, the company said in a statement.

The majority of PPB earnings accrues from investing in government treasuries and FDs, besides commissions on facilitating payments across its saving bank accounts and its e-wallet holders. The e-wallet, which had a deposit of Rs 1700 crore, was able to generate 6-6.5 per cent interest for the company.

Gupta said that the deposits are expected to rise three-fold by the next financial year end.

Earlier, RBI data on payment banks revealed that Paytm Payments Bank and Airtel Payments Bank together command over 88% of the deposits in payment banks in India in 2018.

In December last year, Paytm witnessed over 240% rise in deposit to Rs 371.4 crore (48% of total deposit) from Rs 107.3 crore in March, added the report. In total, payments banks hold around Rs 780 crore in deposits, including savings and current accounts till the end of last year.

PPB now aims to introduce more products and features on its platform to increase the monthly processing of savings account payments from Rs 24,000 crore to Rs 40,000 crore in FY'20.

Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma holds 51 per cent share in Paytm Payments Bank, while the rest is held by One97 Communications.

Besides Paytm, Airtel, Fino and India Posts are the other fully operational payment banks. There has been doubts about the earnings of the payment banks as they cannot generate revenues by lending. Besides the transaction size is always going to be small.

They are hoping to bring more people from the unbanked segment, which stands at 233 million, within their fold to achieve the scale.