The Fintech Revolutionary Ways: How to Secure your Future with Secured Wealth

Story of Downfall of Paytm

Paytm was India’s one of the most celebrated and successful fintech startup which tasted the goodness of success within very short span and became one of the fastest growing unicorn of India. It was flying with rapid speed until it faced the harsh reality, where RBI has barred this organization from carrying out any monetary and banking transaction.

The fintech unicorn was started by Vijay Sekhar Sharma who came from a middle class background with an extraordinary gleaming dream in his eyes. He initiated his entrepreneurial journey in 2010. He has a strong zeal of enhancing the structure of digital payment of India who wanted to implement his thought of ‘pay through mobile’.

Paytm was started with an aim to offer a common platform for mobile recharges and bill payments and very soon it extended its service and entered into the realm of debit cards, post-paid mobile payments, and the game-changing e-wallet in 2014. Gradually it attracted major players of economy like Indian Railways, to merge with this platform where.

The lockdown of 2022 was bestowed as a boon for this startup when the government declared demonetization which forced the common people to switch to digital payment methods. With the year 2021, Paytm grabbed revenue of 50 million active users, processing over 1 billion transactions monthly.

Further he has pushed the startup to become a juncture of entertainment and transportation by introducing bus, train, and flight tickets along with movie and event tickets.

Paytm payment bank was established in 2017 with RBI’s approval but later it was accused of violating KYC norms of RBI. Though it got several warnings from RBI it did not take any corrective measures and finally it faced a ban to take up new customers.

Despite high revenues, it faced mounting losses due to high operational costs and large-scale investments in growth and customer acquisition. On the other hand, its stock performance drastically declined. Paytm’s data privacy was breached and several data was leaked for which their parent company one97 communication is solely responsible.

RBI has applied fine during October 2023 which is followed by another fine in Feb 2024 on the charges of fraud and money laundering and as the final verdict, RBI completely banned Paytm from carrying out every banking activity.

Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra told media, "If there are any fresh charges of money laundering against Paytm by RBI, those will be investigated by the ED as per the law of the land. And restrictive actions have not been taken against Paytm.”