Right after the demonetisation hit India, Paytm became one of the biggest beneficiaries of this move. It has now become the go-to choice for cashless transactions. Paytm has been around for a long time but after the demonetisation they have witnessed immense growth in their transactions as well as user base. As the user were forced to go cashless, Paytm captured a substantial share among the e-wallets.

Even though almost every bank in India has its own app for day to day transactions, users opted for Paytm. Mainly due to its simplicity and nation wide support as well as the fact that you can basically perform all your transaction on a single app. From bus, train or flight bookings to electricity, DTH and postpaid mobile recharges to name few – Paytm supports and provide a lot of services.

In the beginning Paytm managed to handle all the operations and transaction pretty well, but now there are multiple reports of service outages, transaction failures and payment gateway interruptions.

Multiple failures and their probable causes:

Many users including myself have witnessed multiple transaction failures of late. The money transfer from bank accounts to Paytm account has failed multiple times and the refunds of the same are taking ages. Many frustrated Paytm users took the same to Twitter and even raised the question as who should we hold accountable for the losses :

Paytm has made various announcement regarding the technical issues on Twitter, with a tweet dating 15th December saying that they are ‘updating their systems for higher capacity’.

However, when we checked the service outages for the last 24 hours, multiple failure reports were found:

The numbers might not look much, but consider it as the initial statistics in the long run of the cashless economy plan of Government – the numbers start to look serious and the fact that the failed reports in question involves money, makes it a serious problem.

Now according to Paytm’s policy, they are not liable for any financial loss incurred by the user and they cannot be held responsible for the same.

To deal with the increased complaints Paytm has even started an IVR number for users regarding their queries, something that the company lacked just a few days ago when I had an unsuccessful transaction and I had to communicate through emails.

Reports of Paytm servers being hacked have also emerged according to a transcript of a perpetuated conversation between Paytm founder and a journalist. The same was provided to National Herald India by Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi on December 15 at a press conference.

During the conversation Vijay Shekar Sharma – Paytm founder admits to the attacks on Paytm but asks the journalist to hold the info. Many users have expressed their disdain towards Paytm regarding their experiences. The same has pushed many users towards Governments’ UPI for their day to day need which can be headache for Paytm.

With the demonetisation, Indians don’t have any option other than going digital for their day to day needs. If Paytm doesn’t handle the issues it is facing fluently and efficiently, it may lose the humongous user base and goodwill it has garnered and the users will opt for other e-wallets which Paytm obviously doesn’t want to.

Situation Can Get Worse:

The situation can get worse if the issues are not dealt with promptly. Since the Government is trying its best to implement the cashless economy, the user base is going to increase rapidly provided Indians accept the Government plans. Users cannot be expected to use multiple e-wallets or payment methods for different tasks depending upon the situation.

Any substitutes?

Yes, plenty. There are multiple substitutes for the users if they want to opt out of Paytm services. Banks have their own apps such as SBI’s Buddy , BoB Mitra and Axis Pay to name a few. Thus users can basically use the apps provided by their own banks or go for UPI and IMPS based transactions.

With plenty of options for consumers to chose from, other e-wallets should also pay heed to the issues faced by Paytm and should take the necessary actions to avoid them.