With an aim to strengthen its financial services offering before an initial public offering, Paytm has partnered with private lender HDFC Bank and plans to launch products across digital payments, lending and point of sale solutions by combining their strengths within the banking, lending and digital payments space.

The two companies will build solutions across payment gateway, POS machines and credit products including Paytm Postpaid which is that the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solution, Eazy EMI and Flexi Pay.

The first leg of the partnership will include Payment Gateway and co branded POS Solutions for Indian merchant partners.

While the bank will drive merchant partnerships across India, Paytm will offer them its existing range of Android POS devices.

The job of selling Paytm’s payment solutions are going to be that of HDFC’s salespersons.

The aim is to accelerate digital transformation in semi urban and rural India with the mixture of HDFC Bank’s network, products and credit appraisal capabilities and Patym’s technological platform.

Paytm claims to be having 333 million users and 21 million merchants onboard.

With over 50 million credit and open-end credit customers, HDFC Bank may be a strong player within the payments ecosystem with leadership in both mastercard issuing and acquiring businesses. it’s a footprint of over two million merchant acceptance points and 48 per cent business market share on merchant acquiring volume.

“This partnership will further strengthen the financial services ecosystem by bringing together our technology and digital solutions and HDFC Bank’s retail and credit prowess,” said Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, Paytm Lending.

“Through this partnership we’ll even be jointly delivering enhanced SmartHub solutions to the market,” said Parag Rao, Group Head, Payments, Consumer Finance, Digital Banking and IT, HDFC Bank.

Paytm is looking to launch a Rs 16,600 crore IPO by October.