With a mobile wallet user base of over 220 million, Paytm is hoping that 40-50 per cent of its customers to use its Digital Gold account to buy, store and sell gold.

Digital Gold, launched a couple of months back in partnership with MMTC and Switzerland’s PAMP, has triggered people’s interest. “A good number of Paytm users are now testing the product to understand if they can really buy ₹1 worth of digital gold. After the initial success, they try to buy for ₹11. It is interesting,” observed Krishna Hegde, Senior Vice-President, Paytm.

According to Hegde, people had bought digital gold from as many as 4,000 pin codes in India in the last two weeks.

Harshit Pande, Head, Business Development and Strategy, MMTC India, said more than 1,000 users had bought digital gold totalling about one kilogram.

Both Hegde and Pande are quite optimistic about the buying trend, considering Indian households interest in the precious yellow metal.

Sharing some statistics, Hegde said “Indians currently hold more than 24,000 tonnes of gold worth $900 billion (as per WGC estimates) and Indian households bought more gold in 2016 than any other financial asset despite the challenges of buying pure gold and storing it.”

Highlighting the advantages of buying digital gold on Paytm, he said the customer would be able to buy gold online and store it in MMTC–PAMP’s vaults free of charge. They can also request for their gold to be delivered at their home in the form of minted coins or sell it online instantly. Above all, one can buy 24 carat 999.9 gold.

One can buy up to a maximum of 1.50 lakh per transaction, but there is no limit on the number of transactions. The effort is towards making gold buying more organised, he added.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW