Mumbai: Razorpay today announced that it registered 3X growth in payment volumes over the past 12 months, thanks to the thousands of SMBs, especially from Tier 2 & 3 cities, who chose the payment gateway as they went online for the first time. This led to large scale adoption of digital payments across the country, as Razorpay witnessed over 54% of digital transaction volume coming from SMBs in Tier-2 & 3 cities alone. Online transactions in cities like Ahmedabad and Jaipur grew by about 50% within a week’s time.
The full-stack financial services company aims to further accelerate this digital revolution, by enabling 5 million new Indian SMBs to adopt digital payments in the next 12 months, currently, the company serves over 5Mn businesses. Razorpay also plans to invest heavily in strengthening the security and fraud analytics infrastructure, along with building hyperlocal solutions to provide a seamless and safe payment experience for all.
Razorpay also helped provide access to credit to thousands of SMBs through its neo-banking platform, Razorpay company has been disbursing credit of upwards of 250Cr per month, which has helped several Entrepreneurs get access to working capital. The company aims to scale this up to INR 500 Cr per month as it looks to expand its lending offering.
Commenting on what led to this increased digital payment adoption, Harshil Mathur, CEO, and Co-founder of Razorpay, said, “One of the significant overnight changes we saw in how people were approaching the initial lockdown period of isolation and uncertainty in 2020 was in their digital spending behaviors, especially people from Tier 2 & 3 cities. Online shopping became the new normal but it left offline businesses grappling with the fear of losing their business. Not only the offline businesses but some of the online businesses in the essentials category, bill payments, education among others were also struggling to keep up with demand and ensure business continuity.
We wanted to do our bit but not by continuing to offer the existing solutions but build customized solutions to help struggling businesses adapt to the new normal by providing flexible easy-to-integrate payment and banking solutions. Some of these products included the Same Day settlements allowing businesses to receive funds in just a few hours instead of the usual 3-5 working days settlement period. Other products launched to help businesses improve their cash flows and manage operational expenses better included Working Capital loans, Instant Refunds, UPI AutoPay, and partnerships with stalwarts like Visa & PayPal.”
He added, “While this lockdown has affected the economy in many ways, it feels good to have leveraged the opportunity to be able to support and empower the underserved SMBs, Startups & Freelancers with our payment and banking solutions. We’re not done yet, there’s so much more to do to help SMBs, Startups & Freelancers. While we can’t foresee a lot of things, we believe the new macroeconomic narrative will soon transform and we will continue to work towards strengthening this community of disruptors.”
Recently, Razorpay announced a string of new products aimed at empowering the next phase of digital growth for Small Businesses in India. The company launched Vernacular Language Support in 7 languages, India’s first B2B app store, “Razorpay Trusted Badge” to help improve conversions for new businesses, and Group Health Insurance for companies with as few as two employees. The Fintech unicorn has also been steadily growing its neo banking arm, Razorpay X which serves more than 10,000 businesses today and is the leading B2B neo bank in the country.
In the last six months, Razorpay has witnessed 40% month-on-month growth. The company was recently crowned one of the leading FinTech Unicorns with the Series-D fundraise of $100Mn. Razorpay currently powers payments for over 5 Mn businesses including the likes of Facebook, Airtel, BookMyShow, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred, ICICI Prudential among others, and is all set to reach 10 Million businesses by 2021.
