"Indian Alipay" Paytm faces regulatory crackdown, revenue declines for four consecutive quarters.

Revenue of Paytm, a financial technology company in India also known as the "Indian Alipay", has been declining for four consecutive quarters. The company is trying to overcome the shadow of regulatory restrictions imposed a year ago, which have damaged most of its business. Data shows that in the third quarter of the 2025 fiscal year ending in December, the company's revenue fell by 36% year-on-year to 18.3 billion rupees (approximately $2.11 billion), lower than analyst expectations of 19 billion rupees; net losses narrowed to 2.08 billion rupees, less than the expected loss of 3.32 billion rupees. In the competitive financial technology sector in India, Paytm is competing against local and global companies such as PhonePe under Walmart Inc. (WMT.US) and Alphabet Inc. Class C Pay under Alphabet (GOOGL.US). However, India's banking regulatory authority almost closed Paytm's banking subsidiary in early 2024 because of ongoing warnings about unregulated data flows between the subsidiary and larger fintech companies. It is reported that the Reserve Bank of India pointed out in late January last year that Paytm had continued violations and regulatory issues, and ordered Paytm to stop most of its business, including requiring bank branches processing transactions for Paytm to stop related banking activities after the end of February last year. Paytm stated that the Reserve Bank of India ordered the company to stop its popular mobile wallet business and other businesses from March last year. This hit the company's payment processing and the majority of its overall business, forcing its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma to establish deeper partnerships with other Indian banks. Subsequently, Vijay Shekhar Sharma sold Paytm's movie and event ticketing business to Zomato to help the company control expenses. Paytm is also awaiting approval from the Reserve Bank of India to become a payment aggregator, helping online retailers and merchants on its network to accept customers' digital payments. Furthermore, data shows that in the third quarter, Paytm's monthly average transaction users decreased from 71 million in the previous quarter to 70 million. Paytm stated that it paid 38.3 billion rupees in commercial loans in the third quarter, an increase of 16% from the previous quarter.