The saying “one man’s loss is another man’s gain” resonates well in India’s competitive fintech sector. In what appears to be a “moment-marketing” stunt, one of the largest merchant payment platforms Pine Labs took a jibe at Paytm’s newspaper front-page ad on a national daily.
Pine Labs came up with their digital ad campaign saying, “The front page can be bought. Trust cannot”. The ad further said that around “One Million businesses across India count on Pine Labs to power their business in-store, one transaction at a time. Explore the range of our in-store solutions”
Paytm’s front-page ad came just a day after the embattled company partnered with Axis Bank for the settlement of merchant payments. Paytm had announced that it has shifted its nodal account to Axis Bank through an escrow account that it has opened with it.
Not to be left behind, PhonePe too weighed in on the Paytm crisis.
PhonePe’s founder and CEO Sameer Nigam on February 19 said that the fintech company does expect a good share of its rival’s customers to come onboard.
While he didn’t mention the big rival’s name, he was alluding to the ongoing Paytm regulatory fallout with the Reserve Bank of India. Further, he said the RBI’s actions were ‘proportionate’ as it came after multiple warnings to Paytm.