PayTM: Mobile Payments, No Internet Required

For the longest time, mobile payments have been directly associated with mobile Internet access. This has largely been unquestioned, though some efforts have been made to better allow those whose Internet access isn’t great or is temporarily disconnected to continue to make payments.

PayTM, meanwhile, has brought out a fairly revolutionary new feature: mobile payments without an Internet connection at all.

How does PayTM do this? Via the simple expedient of a toll-free number, that’s how. Users who call 1800-1800-1234 can make payments not only to merchants, but also to regular people, all from this simple phone number interface.

It’s not quite as easy as just calling a number, though; first users have to register with PayTM, using their current mobile number, and then register a four-digital PayTM PIN. When intending to make a payment, users thus only need to enter the target mobile number, the amount desired to transfer, and the PayTM PIN to move cash from one PayTM wallet to another.

With over a million offline merchants accepting PayTM already, and a host of services involved in the picture, this is a move that will likely draw plenty of interest. Throw in a host of consumers eager to get rid of their larger bills and unable to do so through standard banking systems and being able to just route cash into a PayTM wallet or the like is pretty attractive.

This is a development that might well give Mobiqwik the cold chills; the company has been eagerly pushing into the Indian mobile payments market itself, and now, if it’s about to lose access to a large slug of unconnected businesses, that could be the kind of thing that cements PayTM’s place in the larger mobile payments ecosystem.

Regardless of the brand attached, it’s likely to be a welcome move to make it easier to trade money from one user to another. Concerns about security notwithstanding, PayTM may have made a big new move in the rapidly changing Indian mobile payments market.