Paytm Plots Advance on the US?

United States mobile payments firms trying to take a slice of the market internationally isn’t new. We’ve seen it happen in China, though without much success, and in plenty of other places as well. We don’t, however, see much of other firms trying to come into the United States. Meanwhile, Paytm wants to go full-on with this market and open itself up as an option for American citizens to use.

“I want to build a product made in India consumed by those…in the developed world.” That’s the line from Paytm’s chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma, which makes it seem that it’s not just the US on the block, but Europe and beyond as well.

Paytm has already come online in Canada, and though the Canadian user base is lackluster at best—not even a patch on the 260 million currently seen in India—the average Canadian transaction is significantly larger, which is likely giving Paytm some hope here.

Paytm has even gone so far as to make inroads with WhatsApp. Though WhatsApp hasn’t commented on whether or not it will go this route, a WhatsApp / Paytm team-up might see Paytm services available for WhatsApp users to put to use.

However, if that falls through, Paytm is also reportedly hard at work on its own messaging service to bring out, complete with Paytm payment functionality. However, there’s a serious problem here that Paytm needs to address.

Paytm would be walking into a hotly-contested environment. It’s going to have to make a case for why its service is worth leaving a current service for, because many of the users who are already planning to use mobile payments are doing so already. Sure, there’s some room here for new customers, but how many of these new customers are going to want to turn to the leading payment app in India? Unless Paytm can cook up—and heavily promote—a big list of at least five reasons Paytm is better than Apple Pay, it’s probably not going to pull in enough market to matter.

If Paytm’s hoping for anything more than a skimming strategy abroad, it had better be ready to explain why people should be ditching a current provider.