MUMBAI: Paytm Money, the investment and wealth management arm of mobile payment platform Paytm, has received approval from securities and capital markets regulator Sebi (Securities & Exchange Board of India) to start stockbroking services.
The company did not provide a timeline for starting such services but said its membership with exchanges BSE and NSE is also approved.
This comes at a time when stockbroking firms seem to be the upping their game by offering similar discount broking products.
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On Monday, Axis Direct and Angel Broking came up with discount broking products. The entry of players such as Paytm will intensify the pricing battle in the retail broking space and squeeze margins further.
Discount broking firms emerged as investors’ favourite in 2018 as Zerodha outpaced other big brokerage firms in terms of client numbers, data available with the National Stock Exchange showed.
Zerodha had 8.47 lakh active clients as of December 2018-end compared with ICICI Securities’ 8.45 lakh customers, HDFC Securities’ 6.74 lakh, Sharekhan’s 5.49 lakh, Axis Securities’ 4.17 lakh and Angel Broking’s 4.16 lakh, the data showed.
