The Silicon Review ^Asia

One of its kind and popular Indian payment and commerce company ‘Paytm’ is in plans to focus on expanding its operations in banking and build upon its distribution and customer base as announced by its founder & CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma recently.

"We want to enlarge the network across the country and increase the penetration. We want to expand this to deposits and current accounts. I think 2017 will be the year for us to expand into banking. We have to build distribution, reach and customer base," Sharma told BTVi.

CEO of the popular payment gateway also said that the ‘Paytm Payments Bank’ will turn functional from next week on. The company is also in plans to expand its customer base with a static aim to reach a customer base of 500 million by 2020.  Post-demonetization, Paytm witnessed a rush in its customers owing to the digitization push by the government.

"I think what we saw small shops, and people who traditionally didn't get access to digital payments, opted for digital payments. It's very encouraging," he said.

With an optimistic hope for a global outreach, he said, "Traditionally Indian companies have found global customers, which are business to business customers, but not consumers. How about a consumer technology company coming from India, and that is the shot we want to take."