These figures show the incredible growth of Paytm as payments platform

Digital payments major Paytm on Sunday claimed that it has achieved annual run rate of 5 billion transactions and registered USD 50 billion gross transaction value (GTV) in a year. GTV refers to the total transaction value through the platform in a given time period. In a blog, Paytm said that it has processed over 400 million BHIM UPI transactions in last six months. "We have also achieved 500 per cent growth in money transfer transactions last quarter," it said.

Paytm said that it has witnessed a tremendous increase in adoption of digital payments in tier II and tier III cities that constitute 50 per cent of its total user base. Surat, Durgapur, Rajkot, Meerut, Imphal, Rohtak, Panipat, Mangalore, Ranchi, Puducherry, Rajamundri, Warangal, Jodhpur, Thrissur, Karnal, Madurai and Jamnagar are among the fastest adopters and are leading the wave of digital payments adoption, the company added.

Explaining the reasons that led to this growth, the digital firm said: "A major factor that has contributed to this growth is our multilingual app. Around 25 per cent of our users prefer using the app in their regional language. Hindi is the most used language after English, followed by Gujarati, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Kannada among others." The government's push towards the adoption of digital payments has further helped in digital payments acceptance among the masses.

In June,  the payment firm had claimed that it had crossed an annual gross transaction run-rate of USD 29 billion driven by growth across mobile payments and bank transfers through its platform.  "We are already seeing a GTV (gross transaction value) run rate of USD 29 billion. We are currently logging about one billion transactions per quarter and we aim to double it this year," Paytm spokesperson had said.

He further said that about seven million offline merchants accept payments through Paytm QR. Also, over 100 million of Paytm customers have completed the KYC process for transacting on its platform. "We will continue expanding the digital payments ecosystem in our country and enabling small merchants to accept payments digitally. We are committed to continued investments in our existing businesses, and to building new ones to make India a cashless nation," the spokesperson had said.

Earlier, the Alibaba and SoftBank-backed firm had announced that it would invest Rs 5,000 crore over the next three years to enhance bank transfer and other payments facilities for customers through its platform. It had stated that it expects to process about Rs 60,000 crore worth of monthly bank transfer transactions.