Paytm seeks exclusive deals with merchants

BENGALURU: In an aggressive move, payments platform Paytm is sending termination notices to payment aggregators such as PayU, Citrus, Justpay , Ezetap, and others. The company is insisting on exclusive arrangements with merchants from April.

This means merchants have to complete the entire process of payment solely on Paytm's platform and the company will not offer its wallet services unless the merchants have exclusive agreements with the Alibaba backed company . This could adversely impact the revenues of the payment aggregators.

Payment aggregators provide payment services, such as credit card and bank transfers, to merchants selling on online platforms. Typically, they store banking data of these merchants to allow for faster purchases or hold money in an account to allow for future purchases. Paytm says it has close to a lakh merchants on its platform.

“We are going to stop our wallet services for merchants via any online or offline aggregator in order to build our own trusted and captive audience. This will also improve the overall user experience and success rates for merchants because they will be using a customized integrated system” Kiran Vasi Reddy, senior VP at Paytm told TOI. A senior executive from a rival wallet and payments gateway firm termed it a “bold move”.