By Yuthika Bhargave
The Hindu, Chennai, India
Saturday, July 2, 2017
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/pay...er-gold/arti...
Paytm, which has sold more than 100 kilograms of gold on its platform, is in discussions with jewellers across the country to enable buyers to redeem their digital gold in the form of jewellery.
In April this year the digital-payments firm had partnered with MMTC-PAMP to allow consumers to purchase 24-karat 999.9-purity gold on its platform and store it in MMTC-PAMP's secure vaults free of charge. Customers, who could invest one rupee onwards, currently can either sell the gold back online or can get accumulated gold of more than 1 gram delivered to their homes.
"The response has exceeded our expectations. We are in the process of enabling customers to convert this gold into jewellery of their choice at their favourite outlets across India," said Krishna Hegde, senior vice president of Paytm.
He added that this would help Paytm reach out to a "wider set of customers" while also benefiting jeweller partners.
"Paytm customers will be able to find jewellers near them where they can convert Digital Gold into jewellery instantly by paying a making charge," he added.
He said users had been buying gold in a variety of denominations right from 1 rupee to a few lakhs of rupees.
"Some are buying gold worth 11 rupees every day while there are some who are buying 1 gram every week,” he added.
He added that the company is seeing 150 percent month-on-month growth in terms of number of transactions for gold on the platform.
"People in the 25-35 age group are our core buyers for gold, but increasingly we are seeing 50+ users embrace the product," Hedge said, adding that Goa, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh have emerged as the top markets for the product.
On the partnership with jewellers, Rajesh Khosla, managing director at MMTC-PAMP, said once the consumer wants to convert gold holding into jewellery, the gold is transferred from the customer's account to the jeweller's account providing complete flexibility in its redemption.
* * *
