Paytm Launches Android App Store For Indian Developers; Lists Over 300 Apps

• The move is aimed at supporting Indian app developers to take their products to the Indian masses.
• This initiative supports the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission drive as the digital spending of the consumers is in India only.
• Paytm’s big move can be in retortion of Paytm’s temporary removal from Google Play Store citing its violation of gambling policies.

The Noida-based payments platform Paytm launched what it calls 'Mini App Store' within its digital payments app. The move is aimed at supporting Indian app developers to take their products to the Indian masses.

The apps listed in its mini-app store will not be full-fledged but rather be progressive Web apps (PWAs) that are basically websites that can run within a web browser without requiring any installation.

Paytm claims that these apps will also help users save their data and memory. The company also claims two developers can complete the integration of the web app within just two weeks.

According to Paytm, the Mini App store has been designed to help small developers and businesses in India to set up low-cost and easy-to-build apps using HTML and Javascript and the listings are absolutely free of cost.

Paytm will also provide developers with a dashboard for analytics, payment collection, and various marketing tools to better engage with users.

It will also provide free payment avenues including Paytm Wallet, Paytm Payments Bank, and UPI. However, a 2% extra charge is levied for payments using credit cards.

Paytm founder & CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, "I am proud that we are today launching something that creates an opportunity for every Indian app developer. Paytm Mini App Store empowers our young Indian developers to leverage our reach and payments to build new innovative services."

"For Paytm users, it will be a seamless experience that doesn’t require any separate download and enables them to use their preferred payment option," he added.

Also read: 34 Malicious Apps Banned By Google From The Play Store

The move has the potential of being welcomed by many Indian developers. Also, it falls under the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission drive as the digital spending of the consumers is in India only.

As of now, the Mini App Store only has a few apps listed, although Paytm plans to list 300 services in the coming days. The list of these apps includes big names like Domino’s, NetMeds, Decathlon, Ola, Rapido, FreshMenu, NoBroker, etc.

This comes at a time when entrepreneurs in India were not happy with Google’s new guidelines and also rallied for a national app store. Paytm’s big move can be in retortion of Paytm’s temporary removal from Google Play Store citing its violation of gambling policies.

Other apps like Zomato and Swiggy also faced the wrath of Google’s new guidelines as they paused their sports-based cashback which was popular especially during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020.

Earlier, Google announced that it would enforce a 30% fee for apps that are on Google Play but are not using its billing system. However, the tech giant has extended the timeline (March 31, 2022) by which Indian developers can integrate their apps with the Play Billing system.

Paytm is also holding a developer conference on October 8 to make them understand better how the Google Play Store alternative works.

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