Paytm does a Maggi! Promises personal loans in '2 minutes'

Paytm has launched round-the-clock instant personal loan services. Through this new offering, Paytm aims to offer loans to 1 million customers by the end of the fiscal. In the beta phase, however, Paytm has disbursed personal loans to more than 400 select customers.

Interested customers can avail this facility from the 'Personal Loan' option under the financial services section of the app. The online financial services giant has partnered with several banks and NBFCs to process and disburse loans in less than two minutes. The beneficiaries shall get flexible repayment tenure of 18-36 months and EMI will be determined accordingly.

Through this initiative, the One97 Communications-owned e-commerce behemoth plans to make personal loans accessible to the self-employed and young individuals. Bhavesh Gupta, CEO of Paytm Lending stated, "We aim to make Instant Personal Loans accessible to the self-employed, new to credit individuals and young professionals who need short to medium term personal loans to manage urgent expenses so that lack of resources does not come in their way to fulfill dreams and ambitions."

Gupta added another objective of rolling out this feature is to become an enabler for India's self-reliance story and said, "Our aim is to become a growth enabler for India's aspiring youth and young professionals to help them become self-reliant. We will continue to innovate and digitise as many services that help in bringing 'new credit' users into the formal economy".

Besides launching a personal loan service, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-founded app has also expanded its postpaid services to payments at Kirana stores and retail outlets. This facility has also been extended to shopping on Paytm Mall and online payments on apps like Domino's, Tata Sky, Spencer's, Patanjali, HungerBox and Pepperfry.

Also read: Paytm parent One97 in red for 7th year, but cuts losses

Also read: CMS Info Systems to invest Rs 200 crore; set up 3,000 SBI ATMs by March