Indian digital payments company Paytm raised funds in late 2019 from a group of investors including existing sponsors such as SoftBank Vision Fund (Japan) and Ant Financial (China).

Reuters reported that the company did not disclose any details, but sources familiar with the matter said that Paytm had raised USD 1 billion in the latest round.

Paytm co-founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma stated that the round would lift the company’s valuation to USD 16 billion.

The company plans to expand its activities to lending and insurance in the next three years and invest INR billion (USD 1.39bn) to attract more users.

Paytm was founded in India in 2010 and now it is practically the synonym for digital payments in the country.

Paytm is a mobile wallet that enables the users to make money transfers, pay for food delivery and facilities, purchase train and cinema tickets, and get small loans. The wallet is owned by One97 Communications, which has raised over USD 3 billion so far. According to Credit Suisse, India’s digital payments market, which is valued at USD 200 billion now, is going to reach USD 1 trillion within the next four years. Paytm is competing with companies like Amazon, Google and Samsung in this market.

The startup operates in Japan too, under PayPay brand. The Japanese branch is a joint enterprise with SoftBank. The company announced back in June that its wallet had 8 million users in Japan.

Technological companies entered into India’s digital payments market in 2017. For that purpose, they used UPI (Unified Payments Interface), which was created a coalition of banks backed by the government.

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