Paytm might just go global, and soon

Paytm and its investor Alibaba back in January entered into an official agreement that would allow Paytm to expand to global markets like the US, China, Japan and the UK. In turn, Alibaba’s Alipay would have access to Paytm’s payments services industry. With Paytm partnering up with Wipro for its upcoming payments business, that dream is just one step closer.

According to this agreement the payment platforms of both firms will integrate. That will allow Chinese consumers to shop on Paytm, and pay via Alipay, while an Indian will have access to Alipay’s existing merchant base that spreads across several developed markets.

While India’s online retail scene might have seen a slowdown in recent times, that hasn’t stopped major players like Snapdeal and Flipkart from launching their own wallet services to grab a piece of the booming payments market. However, only Paytm’s founder-CEO has the payments bank license issued in August this year.

Back in Jan, The Mint reported Paytm’s parent firm One97 Communications entered into a partnership with Alibaba’s cloud computing division AliCloud to install Alipay’s tech base via AliCloud, also called Aliyun. This reportedly cost the Indian e-commerce firm Rs.120 Crores.

Once Paytm’s own payments bank is up and going by the second quarter, Indians can use Paytm effortlessly to pay for purchases from overseas vendors.

The data centers for these technology solutions will be in India. Wipro is supposed to put in place and manage the data centers for the Payment Bank in order to ensure smooth functioning of the new unit. Paytm currently has two data centers in Mumbai, and one in Delhi.

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