Update: Paytm's chief commerce officer Kiran Vasireddy spoke to MediaNama and clarified that the company is cutting off wallet services to payment aggregation companies. He added that the company has sent notices to "every company" which acts as a payment aggregator though did not disclose a specific number. Vasireddy added that 0.3-0.4% of Paytm's transactions comes through such payment aggregators. "We also realized that the number of customers and transactions that were coming through them were far lesser than what we had a direct relationship with. At the end of the day, direct relationships with merchants will have a better user experience and success rates on transactions," he added. Vasireddy also explained that Paytm's user experience was hampered as customers had to go through a number of hops to clear a payment and hence opted for a more direct relationship. Update: Ezetap's co-founder and CEO Abhijit Bose sent the following statement to MediaNama: "We respect Paytm's decision to go direct to merchants. However, the requirements of consumers and merchants are very different, and a closed loop network of consumers and merchants, especially one in which a merchant must sign up for exclusivity with a single instrument, is both difficult to scale and fundamentally is at odds with what merchants need. While consumers may eventually end up choosing a preferred payment method, merchants need universal acceptance of app payment instruments from a single, smart, and easy-to-use solution. Ezetap's objective is to ensure that every customer that walks into one of our merchants'…
