Paytm Launches Vaccine Finder Tool That Sends Real-Time Availability Alerts
Background:-
- Paytm Launches Vaccine Finder Tool That Sends Real-Time Availability Alerts
- Paytm is India’s largest financial services firm providing an entire range of online payments & financial solutions to customers, online retailers and service partners. Paytm was founded in August 2010 with an initial investment of $2 million by its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma in Noida, a region adjacent to India’s capital New Delhi.
- It started off as a prepaid mobile and DTH recharge platform, and later added data card, post-paid mobile and landline bill payments in 2013. Paytm is India’s leading financial services company that offers full-stack payments & financial solutions to consumers, offline merchants and online platforms.
- In August 2015, Paytm received a license from Reserve Bank of India to launch the Paytm Payments Bank as a separate entity. Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma will hold 51% share, One97 Communications 39% and 10% will be held by a subsidiary of One97 and Sharma.
- Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has resigned as the Director of Paytm Financial Services in wake of Reserve Bank of India’s regulation that prohibits a payments bank chairman to also hold a directorial position in an NBFC (non-banking finance company) unless it’s a subsidiary of the bank.
Linkage:-
- Demonetization gave the company an almighty lift. Prime Minister Modi’s move completely pole axed India’s cash transaction economy and forced people, and in particular the small merchants who are legion in the country, to look at alternatives. paytm wallet was the simplest answer and people flocked to it.
- it went from 125 million wallet customers before demonetization to 185 million three months later, and it has continued to grow, hitting 280 million users by November 2017. The primary business of Paytm is digital payments.
- Paytm serves as a payment gateway to customers and merchants to make seamless payments from cards, bank accounts and other e-wallets. Paytm also provides a range of payment facilities, such as mobile recharges, bill payments, movie tickets, taxi, train and flight tickets, loan payments, insurance, forex, etc. Consumers can directly link their bank accounts and credit cards to their Paytm account to make seamless payments on different retail and online ecommerce sites. Paytm offers a host of payment solutions for different kinds of use cases – Payment Gateway to collect payments via Debit/Credit Card, UPI, Net Banking, Paytm Balance, EMI and more.
- There are two ways to integrate Paytm Payment Gateway in your web or mobile applications Checkout: your customer is redirected to complete payment on a Paytm hosted page Custom Checkout: you can collect payment on your own website or mobile app in a custom designed payment page Payment Gateway Plugins for your existing hosted e-commerce websites Recurring Payments for Subscription-based businesses Payment Links to request money from your customers via SMS or Email. Live tracking of trains, buses, etc. we’re not possible earlier
Current situation:-
- The COVID-19 pandemic has done for the Indian fintech ecosystem what even demonetization couldn’t do. It has accelerated the pace of innovation by at least three years – and the industry is far from done.
- Paytm has recently introduced a new feature in their application through which people can track their COVID-19 vaccines slots
- . Vaccines of COVID-19 has been rolled out in the country in a phased manner starting with a prioritized group of Health Care Workers (HCWs) and frontline workers and in the second phase vaccination program people above the age of 60 and those above 45 with co-morbidities will be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and from 1st May 2021 third phase vaccination program has been started in which people above 18+ to 45 age groups will be vaccinated.
This feature enables the users to check the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, search for centres near home and can get notified when the slots are available for getting vaccinated. The Vaccine Slot Finder also shows available slots for vaccination for the next four weeks and there are options for 18+ and 45+ age groups.
Impact:-
- India grapples with the second wave of the coronavirus With Covid-positivity rate rising among the younger population.18 to 45 years age group as this group is the superspreader of the infection in the country.
- This group accounts for a 51 percent recent surge in coronavirus cases. the government has started vaccinating them as the registration for it started on 28th April 2021 from 4 pm the day itself site got crashed it was obvious that site will get crashed as 18 to 45 age group consist of 51 percent of the population and even half of them will apply for it then too it will get crashed. so, with this Paytm has come up with a new feature In their app called “Vaccine Slot Finder”.
Content contributed by -Viraj Shetty
