New Delhi: Mobile payment and commerce platform Paytm has registered a three-fold increase in payment transactions to offline stores during a four-day sale period, said the company in a statement on Tuesday.

“The company has processed over Rs220 crore in retail sales at partner (offline) stores during four days (9 to 12 December) of cashfree festival...across the country" as per the statement.

“Going forward, we will continue to celebrate 12/12 Cashfree festival as an annual event to celebrate the spirit of going cashless." said Kiran Vasireddy, senior vice-president, Paytm.

After the government rendered Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes out of circulation on 8 November, Paytm has ramped up efforts to increase user adoption and expand merchant network that accept wallet payments.

The Delhi-based Paytm announced increased cashback offers for four days when a user makes payment to an offline merchant.

Meanwhile during November, Paytm is said to have deployed 10,000 people to increase its then existing merchant base of 10 lakh.

Paytm’s current marchant base stands at 15 lakh including retail outlets of Big Bazaar, Pantaloons, Spencer’s, Heritage Fresh,Croma, Burger King, Chaayos,among others. The company claims that the sale resulted in up to eight-fold growth in Paytm-based payments to some merchants, while 60% of such transactions were registered in smaller towns of India.

Backed by Ant Financials (Alipay), Alibaba Group, SAIF Partners, among other, One97 Communications Ltd owned Paytm has emerged as the largest mobile payment company, with more than 164 million users.

Snapdeal-owned Freecharge wallet also rolled out similar cashback-led sales for two days across its merchant network of 100,000. Freecharge claims that the traffic surged by four times on first day of the sale (11 December), in a statement on Monday.

Such a campaign has rolled out at a time when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 7 December announced the removal of two-factor authentication for online card transactions involving sums up to Rs2,000. This makes the experience of card payments and wallet payments equally seamless for low value- high volume transactions.

Mint reported that on 8 December, while such a decision of RBI may not have an impact on the digital wallets, experts pointed out that to keep its users intact, digital wallet companies would have to keep giving incentives such as cashback and paying interest by forming payments bank.

Paytm is soon to launch Paytm Payments Bank Ltd., which will take control of the digital wallet, while the e-commerce business will be a part of One97 entity.

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