on Aug 23, 2021)MUMBAI: Two of the largest players in India’s payment ecosystem — HDFC Bank and Paytm — have come together to share their networks and jointly offer payment solutions to their merchant customers.
HDFC Bank will make available to its merchant customers Paytm’s range of Android PoS (point-of-sale) devices. Through the partnership, HDFC Bank’s salespersons will start selling Paytm’s payment solutions in the market. HDFC Bank will be the payment partner, while Paytm will be the distribution and software partner.
The partners will jointly offer merchants a combined package including a payment gateway and PoS machines in the first leg of the tie-up. Going forward they will also enable credit products including Paytm Postpaid (buy-now pay-later – BNPL) solution, Eazy EMI and Flexi Pay. IPO-bound Paytm is looking to consolidate its position in the merchant acquiring space, where it extends services beyond what is provided by banks.
According to Paytm Lending CEO Bhavesh Gupta, the partnership will strengthen the financial services ecosystem by bringing together Paytm’s technology & digital solutions and HDFC Bank’s retail and credit prowess.
“Through this partnership, we will also be jointly delivering enhanced SmartHub solutions to the market. We believe that this is the start of a great partnership and the cumulative strength of both HDFC Bank and Paytm will help us strengthen our respective leadership positions,” said Parag Rao, group head, payments, HDFC Bank, said. SmartHub is the bank’s payment system designed with a mobile-first approach.
HDFC Bank is the largest issuer of credit cards and deployer of PoS terminals with merchants while Paytm claims to have onboarded 33 crore users and over two crore merchants.
