One 97 Communications, which runs digital payments platform Paytm, has reported Rs 1,827 crore in operational revenue for the December quarter, down 35.8% from Rs 2,850 crore a year back.
The Noida-headquartered company reported a net loss of Rs 208.5 crore down slightly from Rs 221 crore last year.
In the last quarter, Paytm sold the shares held by the firm in Japanese payments player PayPay for $280 million (Rs 2,372 crore). The proceeds from the sale was reported at Rs 397 crore for this quarter.
While the payments app reported a sharp fall in revenue year-on-year, it controlled costs in the December quarter which helped it check its overall losses.
Employee benefit expenses, one of the major cost items for Paytm, stood at Rs 756 crore in this quarter, compared to Rs 1,187 crore a year back. This expense includes the expenses incurred from its employee stock ownership plans as well. Interestingly its payment processing charges have gone down to Rs 570 crore from Rs 982 crore a year back.
These charges are usually incurred by fintech platforms because of the price they need to pay to their partner banks for settling transactions originated by them.
Paytm suffered a major business setback in January last year, when the Reserve Bank of India halted the banking business of its associate entity Paytm Payments Bank. Eventually, Paytm migrated into a third party payment application model working with four other banking partners to settle its transactions. In December Paytm reported 1.1 billion UPI transactions.
In a press note, Paytm said that its financial services revenue, mostly derived from its credit distribution business, stood at Rs 502 crore, with around 590,000 customers (including both consumers and merchants) availing these services through the application. This number has drastically fallen from 810,000 a year back.
Overall Paytm’s GMV (gross merchandise value) or overall transactions stood at Rs 5 lakh crore, up from Rs 4.4 lakh crore a year back. Paytm’s merchant subscription devices and soundboxes stood at 117 million, up slightly from 160 million a year back.
The company’s monthly transacting users, which had drastically fallen after the RBI action last year, is going up slowly. It stood at 720 million in December 2024, up slightly from 690 million in the previous quarter, but down from 780 million a year back.
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