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Informist, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026

--One97 Comm: Huge amount of sales planning is now AI-based

--Context:Comments by One97 Comm mgmt is post-earnings analyst concall

--One97 Comm: To expand more in merchant credit segment

--One97 Comm: Our merchant base is superior in terms of quality

By Suryash Kumar and Sagar Sen

MUMBAI – One 97 Communications Ltd., parent of Paytm, expects robust growth in devices with or without Payments Infrastructure Development Fund over the next two-three years, and Unified Payments Interface has solidified its processing margin boosting its payments business, the management told analysts in a post-earnings conference call Friday. The management also said that a huge amount of sales planning is happening using artificial intelligence.

"We did a 25% growth on a like-for-like basis...we can take it forward," while adding that "This is a year in which certain businesses did not quite do well. Consumer credit cycle continued for a little longer than we thought which affected personal loan and credit side."

The marketing services have been flattish over the last three or four quarters, but the focus has been on getting more merchants, they said. "There is a huge amount of upside left in online merchants," the management said.  

Without the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund initiative, the revenue comes from merchant pay subscription and the merchants who take credit, the management said. "We looked at (PIDF) as extending the reach towards tier-2, tier-3, tier-5, and tier-6 cities, not as a revenue line item. We are not in device deployment or rental device as a business model", the management added.

The Payments Infrastructure Development Fund was established by the Reserve Bank of India to support digital payments infrastructure in tier-3 to tier-6 centres with special focus on North Eastern states. The initiative ended in December raising questions about its impact on Paytm's revenue. 

"We will offset it (PIDF) from, number one, the subscription that we earn from them. So, there is subscription that we earn from them, cross-sell of financial services that we will do and do on them," the management said.

Paytm is also hopeful for online business to generate more upside in payments and finance and more monetisation on payments as it has margin because of platform fees, equated monthly instalments and others. "Online business (payment services) was paused since 2021. Payment business will get smooth because of permission and structure that we are doing. We are recruiting in that. We are recruiting more sales executives for our enterprise sales," the management said. 

The management also said that cost optimisation has always been the focus and it continues every quarter. Paytm's consolidated total expenses was down over 2% for the December quarter on year to INR 21.75 billion. However, this was marginally up on quarter for the reporting period.

The fintech company will also focus this year on expanding wealth products and kind of merchant credit, as it gets more online merchants and larger ones. "We are more sure of higher growth and margin," the management said.

Commenting on adoption of more conservative revenue recognition policy in the last few quarters, the management said, "We will stop recognising revenue from merchants who have been inactive for more than 30 days." It makes reporting more cleaner and transparent, the management added.  End

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

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