Fintech Brief — October 27, 2026
Today’s Top Stories
Paytm’s profit jumps; the underlying comparison is less dramatic
One 97 Communications, Paytm’s parent, reported Q2 FY27 revenue from operations of ₹2,648 crore, up 28% year on year, and consolidated profit after tax of ₹225 crore, against ₹21 crore a year earlier. Merchant GMV rose 26% to ₹7.1 lakh crore; average monthly transacting users reached 8.5 crore, up 13%. The company also reported 1.64 crore merchants paying for subscriptions, 19% higher year on year. These operating figures show expansion in payments and merchant monetisation, not just a swing in accounting profit.
The headline profit comparison needs care. The prior-year quarter included a ₹190 crore exceptional loss; profit before exceptional items rose a more modest 9% to ₹229 crore. Paytm’s reported EBITDA was ₹270 crore, up 90%, while its comparable measure—excluding the prior-year Payments Infrastructure Development Fund incentive—rose from ₹68 crore to ₹258 crore. That is meaningful improvement, but it is a company-defined comparison and should be read alongside the reported figures. Paytm’s exchange-filed earnings release
The board separately approved investments of up to ₹500 crore in Paytm Cloud Technologies and up to ₹500 crore by that subsidiary in Paytm Singapore over the next year. These are authorised ceilings for working capital, investment and expansion—not a new external fundraise. Board-meeting filing
RBI’s new Odisha campus puts payments resilience in focus
The RBI’s new Greenfield Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute in Khordha, Odisha, was inaugurated on October 25; the announcement remained in Monday’s news cycle. The RBI says the facility will strengthen the technological foundation of the financial system. The Finance Minister said it will house mission-critical RBI systems, including RTGS and NEFT, while the institute will build expertise in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and data centres. RBI’s announcement · Business Today report, October 26
The same remarks put UPI’s scale at more than 2,400 crore transactions a month, or nearly 80 crore a day; NPCI data cited by Business Today recorded 24.07 billion transactions in September. That scale makes operational resilience a public-interest issue, not just a back-office concern. The RBI release does not publish the campus’s capacity, redundancy design or recovery targets, so the inauguration alone cannot establish how much resilience has improved.
UPI MDR is still prospective—and Paytm has put a number on its upside
Paytm told the exchanges it expects the proposed merchant discount rate to add about 2.5 basis points to its overall payment-processing margin, based on the company’s current GMV mix. The estimate relates to a 0.4% cap on select person-to-merchant payments above ₹2,000; Paytm says the effect may take two to three quarters after implementation to stabilise. This is management’s estimate, not revenue already earned or a guaranteed outcome.
NPCI’s October 13 notice moved implementation to “immediately after Diwali”, with a specific date still to be notified. The notice applies to selected merchant transactions, not every UPI payment. The unresolved date and the eventual merchant mix matter: consumers should not mistake a proposed merchant charge for a universal UPI fee. NPCI notice · Paytm’s exchange filing
Regulatory and funding check
The SEBI feed’s October 26 entries were filings and recovery matters; its latest listed circular was dated October 23 and concerned research-analyst call records, not fintech payments. I found no new NPCI MDR date or fresh RBI consumer-payments rule in the reviewed feeds. The October 26 YourStory funding roundup reported rounds for apparel brand ReplyAll (₹9.7 crore) and travel platform Bucketlistt (₹7.6 crore), but no fintech raise or valuation to include. SEBI news list · YourStory roundup