Paytm imposes a surcharge on mobile recharges
The move comes after Paytm’s competitor PhonePe piloted imposing a surcharge on mobile recharges. Circling back to Paytm, the app started out by imposing what it tagged as a “convenience fee” ranging from Rs 1 to 6 based on the amount of the recharge. The surcharge was applied to a small number of users and was first spotted as early as March this year.
As per the reports, the said “convenience fee” has been changed to “platform fee”. Note that any recharges carrying an amount of less than Rs 100 will not attract the said platform fee. Apart from that, it is not known exactly how Paytm is rolling out the feature to impose platform fees as a surcharge on users. It is certain that the surcharge will continue to be imposed with a wider customer base in the near future once the small-scale experiment is successful. Vishwas Patel, chairman of The Payment Council of India (PCI) stated that telecom operators have slashed the commission to 50% on percentage-in-point transactions to retail retailers such as PhonePe and Paytm. Apart from that, recharges made using credit cards, there’s a merchant discount rate of 1.8 percent which makes it difficult for online retailers to process these recharges. With the current plan in action, Paytm wants to raise revenue since it records tens of thousands of recharges every day and the collected revenue can be used elsewhere. It goes without saying, Paytm may soon start rolling out the said surcharge on a wider scale.
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