"India's Paypal" Paytm makes first quarterly profit: India's four-way payment platform convicted

Paytm, India's version of Alipay, on Tuesday reported a net profit of 9.3 billion rupees ($110 million) for the quarter ended September, the first time the company has made a quarterly profit. The achievement was helped by a one-time gain of Rs13.5bn from the sale of its activity business.

During the quarter, the company's revenue declined by 341 TP3T to Rs 166 crore.

Paytm's shares initially fell by 5.81 TP3T but quickly recovered most of the losses in early trade. The company is struggling to turn things around after it faced harsh criticism from regulators, which led to a sharp fall in its share price and raised questions about its long-term prospects. Facing stiff competition from the likes of Google in the digital payments space, Paytm is working to retain users while expanding into new areas such as lending.

Earlier this year, Indian regulators ordered the closure of nearly all of Paytm's bank branches, citing years of unregulated data flows between the company and big fintechs. The disruption affected the company's payment processing business as well as much of its overall business, prompting founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma to forge deeper partnerships with other Indian banks.Paytm is still awaiting approval from the Reserve Bank of India and payments regulators to stabilise much of its business.

Paytm's shares have recovered most of the lost ground since February when the stock plunged more than 50% due to regulatory restrictions.

Source: Financial World