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

The two firm would set up solutions across payment gateway, POS machines and credit products including Paytm Postpaid which is the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solution, Eazy EMI and Flexi Pay.

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

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

The job of selling Paytm's payment solutions would be that of HDFC's salespersons.

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

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

With over 50 million credit and debit card customers, HDFC Bank is a strong player in the payments ecosystem with leadership in both credit card issuing and buying businesses. It has 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," stated Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, Paytm Lending.

"Through this partnership we will also be jointly delivering enhanced SmartHub solutions to the market," stated Parag Rao, Group Head, Payments, Consumer Finance, Digital Banking and IT, HDFC Bank.

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