Paytm is removing its in-app chat feature 'Inbox' due to high scaling costs

Last year in November, Indian e-commerce and electronic payments company Paytm had announced the roll-out of a new feature called ‘Inbox.' The company is now removing the feature due to high costs.According to a report by The Economic Times, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma cited high costs for scaling.When the feature was launched, it was detailed as a new ‘messaging platform’ that will allow Paytm users to interact with family and friends. The introduction of this new feature was at the time, considered as a ‘strategic move’ aiming at improving Paytm’s position in the market.[caption id="attachment_4320619" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

Advertisements of Paytm, a digital wallet company. Image: Reuters[/caption]Sharma has now said that the Inbox feature will focus mainly on content, through games, news, and videos.The Paytm Inbox feature is currently available on the app and hasn't been removed yet. Sharma had tweeted on 2 December that saying, "We took off chat from Paytm App after it became pretty popular but code base wasn’t going to scale without a ton of cost."

He told the aforementioned publication in a statement that "Inbox is there and it is getting upgraded with social features. The latest app build now has news, video (TV) and gaming. It also had chat, which we are scaling to a new code base."When the feature was launched, it had basic ‘chat’ features like the ability for the users to communicate with other Paytm users including the functionality to share photos and images. Other features included group chat, recall functionality and the option to send or request money inside any given conversation. The company had also added a ‘notification’ centre where users can stay up to date with any new chats, orders or games.