It has been a long while since we have talked about PayTM, but it seems the wallet company has started 2020 with various intentions to cement their bottom line. First and foremost, we wrote that PayTM Payment Bank would discontinue free lounge access for PayTM Debit Cardholders from January 2020. Now, it turns out that PayTM has also instituted new PayTM Wallet Loading Charges when you choose to use a Credit Card for your wallet loads.
As per the PayTM Payments Bank website, these new charges are listed with effect from January 1, 2020.
Loading money into PaytmAdd money to wallet – Nil
*w.e.f. 1st Jan 2020;
Loading money into Paytm via Credit Card:
– Transactions less than INR 10,000 per month – NIL
– Transactions greater than INR 10,000 per month – 1.75% + GSTIn case the total add money added by Credit card including current transaction exceeds INR 10,000, the entire transaction amount will be charged as 1.75% + GST
- Case 1: If the 1st transaction of add money to wallet in a calendar month is of INR 12,000/-, a fee is charged on entire the INR 12,000/-. That is, you will be charged INR 240/- extra. So total deduction shall be of INR 12,240/- and the amount added to your wallet shall be INR 12,000/-. All subsequent transactions shall be charged accordingly.
- Case 2: Multiple transactions of add money with a cumulative amount lower than INR 10,000/-. For example, 1st transaction of INR 1,000/-, 2nd transaction of INR 2,000/-. Neither of the two transactions is charged. The cumulative money added in the calendar month is INR 3,000. Therefore, any transaction up to INR 7,000/- will not be charged. However, if you initiate a transaction of INR 7,001/- the entire amount of INR 7,001/- shall be charged. All subsequent transactions shall be charged too.
- Case 3: Multiple transactions of add money with a cumulative amount lower than INR 10,000/-. For example, 1st transaction of INR 1,000/- 2nd transaction of INR 2,000/- 3rd transaction of INR 3,000/- and 4th transaction of INR 4,000/-. Neither of the four transactions is charged as the cumulative amount added is below INR 10,000/-. All subsequent transactions shall be charged.
What PayTM is doing here is to pass the credit card gateway charges to the customer, and established INR 10,000 as the fair use for their wallet load per month using a credit card. Loads with UPI, debit cards or Netbanking continue to remain free for unlimited amounts.
PayTM has not instituted load charges for credit cardholders for the first time. Back in 2017 as well, there were charges instituted to close out a manufactured spending loophole.
Many of our readers load up their PayTM wallets using their Amex cards to get through their 4/6 minimum transactions to receive their bonus points. The good news is that these transactions continue to stay below the limit set by PayTM for effecting load fees.
Have you encountered this new fee on loading your PayTM wallets in January 2020? How does this affect you?
(H/T Raghav Kalintri)
Surprisingly, when I try to load an amount over Rs. 10,000 it doesn’t charge anything. When I read the details I realized that Paytm has categorized its customers into 2 (benchmarks not known) and only type 2 customers are charged.
If Ive to pay a bill using CC, using PayTM as a gate way. Will this fee be applicable for the transaction or is it strictly on Wallet load ! ?
Only wallet load
I would go out on a limb and say “Many of our readers” would be an inaccurate assertion. It is likely to be “Majority of our readers” or “Almost all of our readers”.
On a serious note, this was expected sooner or later. I expect other wallets to follow suit soon.
“Majority of our readers” or “Almost all of our readers”.
Well Said 🙂
“I expect other wallets to follow suit soon.”
Not going to happen as they will advertise the 0 rate as a pull feature for some dissenting high value 10k overflow PayTM customers. MobiKwik is now reducing play and has had lay offs, with main play being to allow wallet withdrawl at 4% and they even have a separate app for it. FreeCharge offline acceptance is non existent in its own HQ of Bangalore. PayTM has definitely studied this and realized the retention being high, despite the backlash 3 years ago after demonetization, when it looked more like a make money quick scheme when people were forced to use them for micro payments. Besides, it doesn’t really matter unless that wallet has “Amazon” in its name as that is the only other relevant mass acceptance player online with nobody else looking at offline. The fact that Amazon has concentrated offline to Amazon UPI codes despite having major wallet play means they don’t want to challenge PayTM in this niche micro payment through credit card segment and instead focus on the growing UPI low cost huge data play. PayTM is the King, now looking for taxes on the high income customers who got it into this position. Lets hope the taxes don’t go higher. Happens all the time 🙂
Well said, seems you do know more about the e-wallet industry than me.
However, my assessment comes from the point of view of an investor. Unless you’re an Amazon Pay or Google Pay, with virtually unlimited pockets to burn cash to mine user data (to sell ads of course), you need to start generating returns and reduce the cash burn.
This fee seems like a good point to start.
Let’s see what the future holds.
What happens if the same credit card is used to load multiple accounts? A loophole would be to use different accounts and accumulate the money in a single PayTM account.
Doesn’t work now , it detects that you are requesting same credit card from multiple accounts and declines the transaction… probably they real your comment to plug it
Noticed this while paying the rent a few days back. But it seemed to be
if I pay my electricity bill or telephone bills thru my Paytm account and thru an credit card will they charge the processing fee ?
I pay them without loading – thru Paytm
Still works for small utility payments or wallet transfers but they’ve curbed the major chunk payments like Insursnce premiums or loan EMI payments with this. You can still try using gift cards I guess for these transactions without a fee. Any input on that Ajay?
How do you use gift cards to pay through paytm?
https://paytm.com/offer/about-gift-vouchers/ look at the info on the link. I added some funds on the “add money” section to gift card, and it shows up in the paytm balance. Only difference is that you cannot transfer money from gift card to another person. it can be used for utility bill payment with a cap of Rs. 100000
Loaded 10k into paytm wallet using credit card , then tried loading 1k into paytm gift voucher for self using credit card , it showed error and asked to use UPI/Debit Card , please provide workaround for this