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Even as the world moves online, the offline segment hasn’t lost its charm or demand, especially when it comes to payments. This is why omnichannel models are here to stay.

Consumer behaviour is changing rapidly. A consumer today may walk into an offline store but end up buying a good online, or google something online and eventually end up buying from an offline store. The boundary between virtual and real retailing is blurring, and every payment company or merchant today finds it the need of the hour to enable both online and offline solutions.

Speaking in a firechat session at TechSparks 2022, Nakul Jain, CEO, Paytm Payments Services said, 

“We see a lot of companies coming up that are online and eventually will set up a pop-up store, and that is where they will require an offline solution. And the other way round, a lot of offline stores, especially during the pandemic, have set up an online platform to receive their payments online.”

“It’s a matter of time that payments are going to be at the core of the solutions, and offline and online are just two measures of where the company or merchants can receive payments from,” he added.

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Speaking about the different payment solutions provided by the company, Nakul pointed to its QR code backed by a soundbox as one of the innovations. Paytm Payment Services have smart POS machines integrated into the merchants’ ecosystems that provide easy reckon. On the other hand, the company also offers a seamless platform to receive online payments. 

“At the heart of technology, we are a payments company and everything that we do around technology is to understand what the merchants require or what the customer requires. So everything gets built from that. Even the fact that the entire innovation of the sound box happened from the realisation that many of our merchants were receiving payments but because of the lag in the notification, they would not let the customer go away. That’s where the soundbox solves the problem with instant notification that the payment has been received by the merchants.”

The other thing that is impacting the merchants is how they can grow their customer base faster. Paytm’s answer to that is the Paytm app. 

Unlike many payment companies, Paytm offers an offline as well as an online platform via an app to help startups fetch many consumers, Nakul said.

“The strength of Paytm is the fact that we have 80 million active customers every month on our app that are present in 500 odd cities. And that is a key strength. That’s the kind of power that we have on our app. And we have 33 crore wallet customers that make us one of the strongest players in the market from that perspective,” he shared.