Paytm beats PhonePe, GooglePay as India's highest revenue earner in mobile payments, financial services

Indian fintech giant Paytm on Wednesday reported its financial performance for FY23, where its revenues swelled to Rs 7,991 crore for the fiscal year.

Just inches away from a billion dollars, Paytm's revenue puts it the leading spot in the Indian fintech space and miles ahead of the likes of PhonePe or GooglePay. To put it into perspective, Paytm's Q4 revenues of Rs 2,334 crore were still ahead of PhonePe's revenues of Rs 1,912 crore for the first nine months of the calendar year 2022.

While PhonePe and Google Pay are focused on UPI P2P, Paytm has taken the cake with its diversification of business. In fact, Paytm has been focused on merchant payments, where it actually makes money.

In the fourth quarter, Paytm also recorded UPI incentives worth Rs 182 crore in the quarter, up by 101 per cent on a yearly basis.

Paytm has built a key differentiation in the market for itself with the widest array of payment instruments like Wallet, UPI, Postpaid, Food Wallet, Fastag and a variety of banking products available through Paytm Payments Bank.

For offline transactions, the company has devices like Paytm QR code, Android Smart POS, EDC (Electronic Data Capture) device, IoT devices and the soundbox.

Furthermore, the company has built a solid lending business, wherein it has seen a 364 per cent increase in the value of loans distributed through its platform.

In Q4 FY 2023, revenue for financial services and others grew 183 per cent (year-on-year) to Rs 475 crore. For FY 2023, revenue from Financial Services and others jumped 252 per cent to Rs 1,540 crore.

All of this has also made Paytm profitable. The company which reported operating profitability in the third quarter, has further grown it to Rs 101 crore. For the full year, Paytm has silenced critics with an improvement of Rs 1,342 crore in EBITDA before ESOP costs.

With significant investments in sales, manpower, and improvement in the technology platform, while continuing to grow its revenue, Paytm's leadership across its diverse businesses is expected to grow.