Paytm Payments Bank’s mobile banking share slips to 18% in February

Paytm Payments Bank’s market share in mobile-banking volumes slipped to 18% in February 2019 from 26% in February 2018 with Airtel Payments Bank entering the fray and incumbent HDFC Bank gaining some ground.

Data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show that Paytm recorded 133 million of a total 739 million mobile-banking transactions made during February 2019. This brings Paytm’s share in the overall pie much closer to that of State Bank of India (SBI) which, with 130 million transactions, accounted for 17.6% of the market, down from 18.35% in February last year.

Airtel Payments Bank clocked 39 million transactions in February 2019, cornering a 5.3% share of all volumes. Data on its February 2018 mobile banking transactions was not put out by the RBI.

Paytm may also have lost some ground to the country’s largest private-sector lender HDFC Bank, whose market share in mobile banking zoomed to 6.65% in February 2019 from 1.59% a year ago.

Mobile-banking usage itself has seen a steep jump, with volumes soaring a steep 231% to 739 million in February 2019 from 223.25 million in February 2018. The total value of transactions shot up 158% to Rs 2.94 lakh crore over the same period.

Traditional banks continue to dominate the market in terms of transaction value, though here, too, there has been a reshuffle in rankings.

HDFC Bank in February 2019 contributed 14.56% of the Rs 2.94 lakh crore worth of transactions made during the month. SBI followed close on its heels, with a 14.51% share by value. In June 2018, Axis Bank was the market leader in value terms, with 17.2% of the pie.

While the new-age players are gaining market share in digital payments, bankers say the higher market share of legacy banks in transaction value shows their confidence in the latter set. Savers with Paytm Payments Bank are allowed to keep balances of only up to `1 lakh in savings accounts.

Given Paytm has evolved from a wallet-based model into a payments bank, most of its customers typically make small-value transactions. The value of a single wallet-to-wallet transaction is capped at Rs 20,000.

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