Paying bills online is becoming a norm these days. I can’t remember the last time I went to a local store to get my prepaid number recharged. With this growing habit, services providers as well as 3rd party vendors have started offering online recharge facility. Paytm is one of the popular names in this arena. Those who aren’t familiar with Paytm, it is a service which offers instant web based recharges for almost all popular telecom operators in circles across India.
They have had web based recharge for quite some time now but more recently Paytm also launched an Android application allowing users to get the recharges done on the go. Besides offering their recharge facility to the users, the Paytm mobile application also offers a marketplace (more on that later).
Recharge Options
The primary function of Paytm mobile app offers Mobile (prepaid and postpaid), DTH and Data Card recharge options. Getting the recharges done is as easy as it gets, the user interface is self explanatory. However what caught my interest was the exhaustive list of available recharge options for different service providers! Being an Airtel (prepaid) users, I was shown various Top Up options available, 3G/2G Internet packs, Special Recharges, Full Talktime offers, and more.
This is important in 2 ways, first, even a local dealer isn’t aware of all the available mobile/DTH/Data Card recharge options which at times causes you to miss out on some great deals and secondly, Paytm keeps on updating their database for the latest offers. All these options available at the users disposal work out pretty well to say the least.
Apart from offering mobile recharges Paytm also offers recharges for data cards as well as DTH in similar manner. For both the cases, the available list of supported carriers is exhaustive and I believe it covers almost all the major DTH/Telecom operators. The sole grief I have is about the DTH recharge options. Paytm only offers subscription of base packs (monthly, etc) and not top up recharges.
Mobile Only Marketplace
Other than providing users with the facility of recharging their mobile/DTH/Data Card, Paytm mobile applications also has a marketplace tucked in it. Now being able to shop using your android, iOS device isn’t a new thing. Flipkart, Amazon, etc offer dedicated apps to encourage mobile users to shop but Paytm goes one step ahead.
First, Paytm marketplace is ONLY available to users via the Paytm mobile applications, there is no web counterpart. They are essentially into mCommerce rather than the other way around. The interesting part about shopping via Paytm is the fact that you, as a buyer, are given the ability to bargain for the products you are interested in! Yep, that’s true. Like something and think it costs bit too much? Bargain with the seller directly!!
Another area to look into is the Rs. 199 section, a concept similar to 99 cents only stores you find in USA. Since it isn’t humanly possible for me to look into all the available items but there were certainly some deals worth looking into and I’d say you’d be better off checking out this section first (who knows you might end up finding a great deal!). The rest of the market place is pretty much the same as you would find in other e-commerce apps barring enticing UI and ability to bargain.
With respect to payment methods available, Paytm again scores and offers support for most Credits Cards, Debit Cards, Net Banking, ATM Cards, Cash Cards, IMPS and (their own) Paytm Cash. Basically if you are interested in getting a recharge done via Paytm mobile application, you’ll find one way or another to make the payment 😉
Paytm mobile application is available for Android and iOS platform at their respective app stores for free. The links have been shared below:
