NEW DELHI: Soon you may not have to go around the office to collect money to buy a gift for a colleague or pay cash to your newspaper vendor. With improving digital payments infrastructure in the country, Indians are using online gateways for even day-to-day monetary transactions.
Gurgaon-based PayU India has started a service whereby the customer only has to key in Pan card details and bank account information for making digital payments.
Within 24 hours, the Naspers funded startup activates a personal payment gateway and charges 2% commission per collection. For small amounts, it charges a flat fee of Rs 25. "We have newspaper vendors, housewives who makes tiffins, home tutors and even colony event organisers who have started personal online payment services. We have 30,000 such users and plan to scale up this number 10 times by next year," said PayU India CEO Nitin Gupta.
A majority of its 30,000 such users of PayU's free platform are small and medium business owners. Less than 10% are individuals who don't own a company or concern but have started using the platform. One such user is Gurgaon-based Surendra Sharma, a newspaper vendor to about 500 homes, who has devised an ingenious strategy of pasting stickers on newspapers with a weblink mentioned on it.
The weblink directs readers to a payment gateway. "Earlier young kids whom I employed used to often run away with the collected money from households. This has solved the problem of trust as money now directly credits to my savings account," said Sharma, 38. The rise of gateways has helped housewives as well. Gurgaon based Dimple Chatterjee, used to collect money via cheques from her 500-odd customers for her local tiffin delivery service till last year. That's when a customer suggested her to try a personal payment gateway .
A majority of its 30,000 such users of PayU's free platform are small and medium business owners. Less than 10% are individuals who don't own a company or concern but have started using the platform. One such user is Gurgaon-based Surendra Sharma, a newspaper vendor to about 500 homes, who has devised an ingenious strategy of pasting stickers on newspapers with a weblink mentioned on it.
The weblink directs readers to a payment gateway. "Earlier young kids whom I employed used to often run away with the collected money from households. This has solved the problem of trust as money now directly credits to my savings account," said Sharma, 38. The rise of gateways has helped housewives as well. Gurgaon based Dimple Chatterjee, used to collect money via cheques from her 500-odd customers for her local tiffin delivery service till last year. That's when a customer suggested her to try a personal payment gateway .
"With a feedback email, I just insert a secure payment link. It has increased renewals and collection via cheques has dropped to zero," said Chatterjee, who started her tiffin service Calorie Smart in Gurgaon with her former dietician. India's digital payments market grosses about 3 million transactions per day, making a business case for newer startups such as PayZippy, Paytm, ZaakPay and CitrusPay that have emerged in the last three years.
While PayU and ZaakPay have eased norms for onboarding individual citizens with just savings bank account numbers, other companies such as CCAvenue, Ebis and CitrusPay onboard only merchants with current accounts. "We have built our technology infrastructure from scratch which enables us to onboard individuals. At PayU, we now have complex algorithms which direct different cards to different gateways to increase conversion," said IITDelhi alumnus Gupta.
Gupta's 2004 batchmate at IIT-Delhi and online retailer Flipkart's cofounder CEO Sachin Bansal has launched PayZippy, a third party payment gateway, which is still to onboard individuals.
Gupta's 2004 batchmate at IIT-Delhi and online retailer Flipkart's cofounder CEO Sachin Bansal has launched PayZippy, a third party payment gateway, which is still to onboard individuals.
"Digital payments are still a nascent infrastructure in India, which we will try to fix over the next few years. That will be one of our focus as we aim to become India's first $100 billion company ," Bansal said last month during a conference to announce a billion dollar investment in his company.
Freelancers are also benefiting from this change. "Even though I had a website, none of the existing bank payment gateways would entertain me till a year ago as I don't own a company," said 29-year-old freelance lifestyle photographer Naina Redhu. She was onboarded with a personal payment gateway with just her savings bank account number.
"I sold a print online the day I registered last month," said Redhu, also an MBA graduate in IT systems.
"I sold a print online the day I registered last month," said Redhu, also an MBA graduate in IT systems.
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