{
  "id": 5777878,
  "title": "On This Teachers’ Day: How Vijay Shekhar Sharma Helped India Learn Mobile Payments",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/on-this-teachers-day-how-vijay-shekhar-sharma-helped-india-learn",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-09-05T13:20:44.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Free Press Journal",
    "slug": "free-press-journal",
    "url": "https://www.freepressjournal.in/focused-view/on-this-teachers-day-how-vijay-shekhar-sharma-helped-india-learn-mobile-payments"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On this Teachers’ Day, the story of Vijay Shekhar Sharma's role in helping India embrace mobile payments offers valuable lessons. Before mobile payments became commonplace, India needed to learn that a phone could replace cash. Sharma, an early entrepreneur, played a crucial role in shifting this behavior at a large scale. Paytm, Sharma's venture, turned mobile payments from an unfamiliar concept into a daily habit across various establishments like shops, taxis, pharmacies, petrol pumps, and neighborhood stores. The phrase \"Paytm karo\" became synonymous with digital payments.\n\nThe broader digital payments revolution was further propelled by the Government of India's digitization push and the creation of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which provided a robust, interoperable public payments infrastructure. Building on this ecosystem, Paytm delved deeper into merchant counters by leveraging quick response (QR) code-based payments. Sharma's company innovated by addressing practical challenges, such as merchants struggling to repeatedly check their phones after each transaction. Paytm introduced the Soundbox, a device that validated transactions through voice confirmation. This familiar audio cue became an integral part of everyday retail in India.\n\nPaytm extended this concept to its card machines, incorporating audio confirmations. Now, the company is exploring further advancements with artificial intelligence. Its AI-driven merchant devices aim to provide businesses with transaction and business insights through voice interaction, including in Indian languages. Additionally, AI is being utilized across various aspects of merchant operations, including onboarding, fraud prevention, collections, retention, and engineering.\n\nOn Teachers’ Day, Sharma's journey with Paytm serves as a broader technology lesson: complex technology becomes widely adopted when it is simplified enough to become a habit. Sharma played a pivotal role in initiating this learning curve with mobile payments in India. The public digital infrastructure provided by the Government of India facilitated its nationwide scaling. As the story unfolds, the next chapter may involve replicating this approach with artificial intelligence.",
  "summary": "Before mobile payments became routine, India had to first learn that a phone could be used in place of cash. Vijay Shekhar Sharma was among the early entrepreneurs who pushed that behavioural shift at scale. Through Paytm, mobile payments moved from an unfamiliar idea to an everyday habit across shops, taxis, pharmacies, petrol pumps and neighbourhood stores. “Paytm karo” became one of the…",
  "key_points": [
    "Vijay Shekhar Sharma helped India adopt mobile payments.",
    "Paytm turned mobile payments into daily habit across various establishments.",
    "Sharma's company innovated with audio confirmation devices and AI-driven merchant solutions."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}