RazorPay, an online payment gateway solution provider, has today announced that it has started accepting UPI payments on its platform. With this introduction, the company is now accepting UPI, along with Internet banking, virtual wallets, credit card and debit card.
For those who are unaware of it, Unified Payments Interface or UPI is a new payment mode launched by NPCI and RBI. The key difference between UPI and other payment modes is that it’s mobile first and uses MPIN for second factor authentication. With mobile becoming something that is extremely essential, UPI is expected to be the driving factor behind electronic transactions in India.
Commenting about this new update, the company said:
This will be the first large-scale roll-out on the merchant side and does not require the addition of any code to start offering UPI payment options to their customers. All of Razorpay’s merchants will have access to receiving payments via UPI starting today.
Harshil Mathur, chief executive officer and co-founder, Razorpay, said,
Anyone with a mobile phone and a bank account will be able to benefit from UPI for transacting money online. This is a major change for online commerce as UPI will allow merchants reduce transaction costs and create a faster checkout experience.
In keeping with our robust technology, our systems will automatically update this option for our entire merchant base. Merchants need not worry about integrating extra lines of code to offer UPI.
Each customer on UPI has a unique identifier in the form of Virtual Private Address (VPA). This is like an alias for the customer’s bank account. So, instead of having to provide IFSC + bank account or card details, users can identify themselves through a simple VPA. The customer has to simply accept the collect request by entering their MPIN and the payment is complete.
Razorpay, founded in 2014 by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, is backed by MasterCard, Tiger Global Management and Matrix Partners. It provides payment solutions for over 10,000 merchants such as Videocon, Nykaa, Zerodha, NestAway, Udacity and Chai Point, among others.
Lately, fin-tech sector has been witnessing a lot of activity. Recently, Citrus Pay, a startup providing payment gateway solution, has been acquired by PayU for $130 million. The deal is one of the largest to have ever occurred in the niche. As per a market research report by Ken Research Pvt. Ltd, the Indian payments market is estimated to reach around Rs.8,172 billion by 2019.
