In the light of recent events, you must have heard about demonetization and the ban of major currencies in India by the government to counter black money. Although as an aftermath of such decisions has led to a major crisis and shortage of cash in the country.
Almost each and every other customer and business owners are equally facing difficulties in cash transactions and go through their day to day life. And to tackle that, the use of plastic money and e-Wallets are highly suggested by the government.
Although the one ugly truth that’s plaguing the entire idea of plastic money, is the fact that out of 369 million debit and credit cards in the country, only 10 to 15 percent are used for online transactions. And small shop owners and vendors often fail to have card swipe machines for the payments. And in this case, having an e-Wallet makes a lot of sense.
What is an e-Wallet?
E-wallet is an online prepaid account where you can stock your money, and use when required. E-wallet technically eradicates the hassle of carrying hard cash with you. You can rather draw money from your credit/debit card into that particular application and use it for any sort of payments or cash transfer, whenever you want.
What is Paytm?
Paytm is one of the most popular and widely used e-Wallet application/ platform available in India. If you are looking for the most common and convenient way of going cashless with an e-Wallet service, then Paytm is the way to go.
Paytm allows you to have the convenience of withdrawing money from your debit/credit card and store it in your e-Wallet. And then later use it for any sort of payments by transferring the amount to their wallet. Which entirely eradicates the hassle of carrying physical cash with you.
As of now, Paytm is available for all mobile platforms including Android, iOS and Windows Phone. And here is how you can get started with the application.
How To Download The Paytm App
To download the Paytm app for yourself, you need to head over to the respective application store (Play Store, App Store, Windows Phone App Store) and simply search for Paytm.
If you are an Android user, simply head over the Play Store and search for Paytm App and tap on install. And if you are an iOS user, head over to the App Store and search for Paytm and tap on ‘Get’.
Once done with the installation, you can go through the simple 5-minute registration process and sign up for your Paytm account. You need to go through the registration process to start using the Paytm app.
How to Add Money/Send Money/Pay Money
After you are done with the registration process, it’s time to actually use the wallet for real life transactions.
So to begin with, you need to add some money to your wallet to use the service. You can either add money from your debit/credit card or via net banking. Do note, that you can only pay to someone after loading some money onto your account.
Here’s how you can add money:
- Click on Add Money
- Enter the amount to be added
- Select the payment option and click on Pay now
- That’s it, you’ll get a success message
You can pay or transfer money by either of the two methods.
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Pay with QR Code
Due to so much of awareness about the digital wallet and Paytm, you must have seen stalls and shops placed with a Paytm scan QR code for the shop. Where you can just simply scan their QR code and enter the amount you want to pay.
In other case, if you want to receive money from someone, you can generate your own QR Code, which is automatically generated every minute in the application itself. To find the barcode, you need to go to ‘Pay>Show Code’.
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Pay on Mobile Number
The other alternative to the QR Code method is to send money on other’s mobile number. Basically, when you sign up with your mobile number for Paytm, your mobile number turns into a unique identification number for your wallet.
You can either enter other Paytm user’s mobile number and amount to pay them to their wallet. Or you can ask the merchant to enter your mobile number and request you to pay. However, an OTP will be sent to the provided mobile number after entering that OTP and your payment will be successful.
Uses of Paytm
In recent times Paytm is been used more widely and tremendously, even more so because of demonetization. Most of the merchants, shopkeepers, restaurants and business owners now accept payments via Paytm. More so, small scale businesses like tea stalls, vegetable vendors, local stores and more have started accepting payments via Paytm, which makes it quite easier to pay bills in small denominations.
Apart from that, there are some other core features of Paytm available as well, such as everyone can use the service to recharge their number, pay bills for your landline, broadband, DTH, Data, book a ticket for movie, flight, bus, train, etc.
In the latest update, Paytm has added a new feature called ‘Nearby’ with which every user can track their nearby places where the payment mode is accepted via Paytm.
How to return money to your bank account?
Another major concern that comes with the first time Paytm users, is how can you transfer money back to your bank account? And even if it is possible in the first place?
And the answer is yes, the digital wallet service allows you to send money to your bank account with just one tap.
Head over to your passbook menu from the home screen and you can see the send money to bank option. Just select that option and provide your bank account details. The money will be transferred to your bank account within seconds.
After the announcement of demonetization, Paytm has reduced the transfer money charge to back account to zero percent. Which means that now, you can transfer money from you e-Wallet back to the bank account for no additional charges.
So even though the demonetization issue gets real bad in our country. Adopting services like Paytm becomes more convenient and efficient form of transaction.
You can know more about Paytm and cashless transactions here on Paytm’s website.
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