Soon-to-be Payments Bank Paytm now allows payments at retail chains like Spencer’s Retail, Heritage Fresh, More, WH Smith, Kendriya Bhandar, V2 Retail, Value Plus and Pai International (Pai Mobile). This follows its tie-up with quick-service-restaurants such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Cafe Coffee Day, Costa Cofee, Barista, Vaango, among others. Paytm claims to have 125 million wallets. We've written to Paytm for answers to the following questions, and will update when we hear more: 1. How many of Paytm's 125 million wallets were active in June 2016 (or the latest available data) 2. What percentage of wallet transactions during that period were not related to either Recharge or Uber? 3. What percentage of Paytm's transactions are taking place outside of its owned or invested services. Invested services would include Jugnoo. 4. How many transactions during that period took place at the QSR segment (KFC, Pizza Hut, Cafe Coffee Day, Costa Cofee, Barista, Vaango), and what was the amount transacted? 5. What percentage of Paytm wallets have bank KYC completed? Why are these questions relevant? What Paytm is trying to do here is create a virtuous cycle to change user and merchant behavior: they connect wallets to merchants, and to be relevant, they need wallets to be active, and for merchants to get money from those wallets. If there aren't enough wallets then merchants won't be interested, and if there aren't enough merchants, then wallets won't be active. Paytm addressed one part of this equation by aggressively building out its wallet base: it…
