RBI at the forefront of fintech innovation

When innovation is the need of the hour across the fintech ecosystem, it helps to work with a regulator as committed to this innovation as the RBI. Last year, the RBI unveiled an innovation hub (RBIH) in Bengaluru, to encourage sustainable financial innovation. In his address to the Global Fintech Fest last year, the RBI Governor assured fintechs that “We (RBI) will come two steps ahead if you come one step ahead with innovation.”

At Ezetap by Razorpay, we have always worked towards developing innovative solutions to combat fraud. We have always worked closely with all stakeholders to develop newer and better technologies to protect consumers and businesses. One such effort won Ezetap a runner-up award at HaRBInger 2021, RBI’s first-ever global hackathon. Featuring participants from over 22 countries, the hackathon, which revolved around the theme of ‘Smarter Digital Payments’, received over 350 responses. 

The RBI has been proactive in fostering responsible innovation in the fintech industry. The creation of the regulatory sandbox to prevent and mitigate financial fraud has allowed stakeholders to test new products and services. The HaRBInger was another welcome step, encouraging the fintech industry to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible, with technology.

The Ezetap solution

Tackling the hackathon’s problem statement of creating a ‘Social Media Analysis and Monitoring tool for detection of digital payment fraud and disruption’, the Ezetap team built a solution that demonstrated a first-of-its-kind use of AI/ML. Titled the Hidden Analytical Wall – Kavach (HAWK), the solution can monitor social media in order to detect digital payment fraud. It can also evaluate payment and fintech products using sentiment analysis. 

In simple terms, the Fraud Module identifies possible fraudulent bad actors based on reports and complaints in social media and creates a central repository and report for action by law enforcement or regulatory bodies. The tool has a social media scraping feature that can look for certain keywords and hashtags that may indicate a user complaining about fraudulent transactions by bad actors (like the Jamtara fraudsters). It also has a TrueCaller Cross-Verifier feature, so that possible bad actors have their information verified against the Truecaller API. 

Further, there are machine translation (to translate from regional languages) and optical character recognition (to identify phone numbers/VPAs from screenshots) capabilities. 

The Sentiment Analysis Module monitors RBI-regulated bodies from specific news sites, app store & play store and for negative and positive news and reviews. It clusters these into different topics/categories and tracks the overall sentiment.

HaRBInger: A fulfilling experience

The hackathon experience was an immensely challenging and fulfilling experience for us. The team benefited a great deal from the mentoring process that was put in place by the RBI for the teams making the final cut. 

The active support of the RBI will only embolden us to work on developing more innovative solutions to protect businesses and consumers from fraud. A year out (the hackathon concluded in May 2022), HaRBInger 2021 is a much-discussed topic among the leaders and the tech teams here at Ezetap by Razorpay. We are working actively towards bringing the idea to fruition and we can see the immense potential it holds. 

 In “Office, Box Office and Bazaar – A Year in Payments,” we take a closer look at how India spent its money and rediscovered its love for the simple pleasures of life. 

FY23 was the year we got back to living our lives to the fullest, from returning to the office, dining out, travelling, and watching movies in packed theatres, to shopping in physical stores, we seemed to have done it all. 

We went out, celebrated and rediscovered our love of being in the company of those that matter to us. But that wasn’t all! While this was the year we chose to step out and have fun, two days in the year were an exception to that trend. We held our breath, sat glued to our screens and celebrated quite a bit on these two special days where we were more than happy to stay indoors! 

To know exactly which two days these were and to know more about how Indians spent their money in a year that redefined the word “payback”, check out the full report below.

Note: All findings in this report are based on transactions held on Razorpay platform between April 2022 and March 2023. Growth percentages are a comparison between FY23 and FY22 (unless specified otherwise). Offline data is from is from Razorpay’s offline payments platform, Ezetap.

Soon, it was evident she had a knack to hack home decor. 

Sanya started her own business of premium home decor items. She designed savvy vases, funky furniture, and edgy showpieces. Since these were a bit pricey, customers wouldn’t often place orders when there wasn’t a sale. 

“What do I do now? How many sales do I keep having?” She wondered, “I guess it’s time to visit Dr. Poli”. 

Here’s how it went: 

Sanya: Dr. Poli, Customers check out my products, par phir checkout hi nahi karte!

I can’t keep having sales, Aise toh I’ll go into losses. Should I cut down my prices? 

Dr. Poli: Ok, pehle batao, apart from the usual, have you included the Buy now, pay later, or EMI option for customers? 

Read More About: What is Deferred Payment and How Does it Work?

Sanya: No, I have the card, UPI, COD, and net banking options.

Dr Poli: Orders increase karne ke liye, payment options bhi increase karne padte hai.  Aapko pata hai, more than 30% customers prefer pay-later options? 

Sanya:  What is this pay-later payment method? Matlab bina payment order kaise place hoga? 

Dr. Poli: Payment hogi. Customers can pay a little at checkout, and the rest later in installments, over a period of time. It’s like a loan. 

Matlab, checkout abhi, payment ki tension baadme.

Sanya: Par meri payment ka kya? Mujhe bhi paise late milenge?  

Dr. Poli: Wahi toh best part hai, you get paid in full at the time of checkout! 

Sanya: Wow. But who’s paying me then? 

Dr. Poli: Between you and the customer, there’s another party involved, ie, the lender. Companies like ZestMoney, Simpl, and Axio, all deal with pay-later payment options. 

They pay you on behalf of the customer, with a little fee, and the customer pays them over time. 

Samjhin aap?

Aapko milegi full payment, customer ko order! Win win!

Sanya: Arre wah! But what if the customer doesn’t pay back the lender? Mujhe paise wapis toh nahi karne padenge? 

Dr. Poli: Sab BNPL company pe chodh do. They’ll ensure they’ve approved customers who have a decent payments history. 

And as there are usually low or 0% interest rates and different payment plans, customers can pick and choose whichever they prefer. There are EMI plans for as low as INR50 per month! 

Sanya: Awesome! I guess I don’t have to do anything here. *Phew*

Dr. Poli: You actually have the most important job of them all. 

Aapko payment options integrate karne honge. 

Whichever payment gateway you have, you have to include such vendors for the customer, so they can pay via Cardless EMI, EMI, and Buy now, pay later. 

Sanya: Got it, thanks Poli Ji. 

FAQs:

1. What is Buy now, pay later?
2. How do I pay via Buy now pay later?
3. How do I Include the buy now pay later options at checkout?
4. Which companies are best known for Buy now Pay later?
5. How often do you have to make payments after opting for Buy now pay later?
6. How do I pay via EMI?

Founded in 2015 by Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli, and Rishikesh SR in Bangalore, Rapido operates a mobile app-based bike and auto taxi service in close to 100+ cities in India. Today, more than 1.5 million “captains” or riders provide Rapido taxi services—a figure that has grown year-on-year. 

Rapido is playing a major role in defining new ways of cost-effective mobility and revolutionizing inter and intra-city commutes by emerging as India’s first and fastest-growing two-wheeler and three-wheeler taxi ride-booking platform. 

Since 2020, Rapido has expanded its services from just providing two and three-wheeler taxis to Rapido Local (a person-to-person delivery service), Rapido Rental (which allows you to rent bikes on the go), and Rapido Store (a service that helps online and offline businesses with customer delivery). 

The Challenge:

With such growth and expansion, it did not take much time for Rapido to be active across India, and such expansion led to the requirement for a payment partner that understands their needs and is responsive to innovation. Rapido chose Razorpay and is live with the Standard Checkout offering. 

For Rapido, UPI is an important payment method, since over 70% of customers prefer UPI to recharge their Rapido wallet. Hence, optimizing for UPI as a method of checkout was an important investment for the brand. Rapido needed a checkout experience that helps customers complete payments via UPI easily, ensuring high payment success rates for UPI. 

If UPI payments were facing a lower success rate or more drop-offs, it would impact the customers’ payment experience and Rapido’s revenue. Rapido powers a million rides per day; Rapido has not only helped people commute easily across India, but also powered captains as heroes. 

Why Razorpay 

With the majority of Rapido’s customers opting for UPI as a payment method, it was important for Rapido to build a seamless checkout experience, especially on UPI. Razorpay helped them overcome this very hurdle and more! 

Seamless Checkout experience on UPI

Rapido was able to increase its payment share for the UPI method from 70% to 80% with a superior UPI payment experience at Razorpay checkout!

Razorpay checkout offers best in class payment experience for UPI, where customers can complete the payments via UPI in a minimum number of steps and highlights customers’ preferred UPI apps right on the first page of checkout, which leads to lower drop-offs and a smooth payment experience. 

Along with the industry’s best Success Rates on UPI, scaling and growing with Razorpay was a smooth experience for Rapido. Providing a seamless and frictionless checkout experience would make it easier for their customers to search for their favorite method, make the payment instantly, and increase conversion rates.

Customizable payment method orderings at Checkout 

Apart from being an easy-to-integrate payment gateway, Razorpay’s checkout offers diverse options for reordering and bundling payment methods on the checkout page so that customers can find their favorite payment method in a minimum number of scrolls and steps. 

Apart from providing quick integration of the payment gateway, Razorpay also helped Rapido by enhancing its payment page with additional payment options like “buy now, pay later”. These personalisations helped Rapido improve the visibility of all the payment methods available for the customer for fast and convenient checkout. 

An enhanced QR Code and UPI payments experience 

The “QR Code”  was the most preferred method of payment for Rapido’s customers.  Razorpay assisted in building a customized solution for QR Code payments that helped Rapido the payment experience for their customers as well as their captains.  Customers were now immediately redirected to UPI apps like Paytm, Google Pay, PhonePe, etc., after scanning the QR Code generated on the “captain’s” phone after every ride.

“QR code generation flow is widely liked by users and the most opted method. Razorpay helped us to customize QR with callbacks within 2 minutes to improve customer experience.”

• Neha Lohiya, Sr. Product Manager, Rapido

Benefits:

Additional user experience enhancements, including features such as saved VPA ID on UPI and autofill, aided in a faster, and more convenient checkout experience for customers. 

Razorpay Payment Gateway’s custom-built functionality for all digital payments, along with its mobile-optimized checkout experience for customers’ first payment methods like UPI, made it the go-to solution for Rapido. 

With its vast network of over 1.5 million captains across 100+ states in India, an array of unique services ranging from commuting to door-to-door delivery, and a booming bike/taxi service market to take advantage of, Rapido is only set to achieve more remarkable milestones. We are proud to be their payments and growth partner through thick and thin. 

All three of them have been relying heavily on digital payments to run their businesses smoothly. Recently, they were invited to a conference about the evolution and future of digital payments in India, where they chatted about work and their experience with online payments. Let’s join them: Let’s leave Ankit, Alok and Pritisha right there. Aren’t you curious about which QR code Pritisha has been using? Well, it’s the new QR code offering from Razorpay. The future-forward Razorpay Multi QR Codes are built to truly transform how you accept contactless payments. Here’s how: 

Meet Razorpay Multi QR Codes – the most robust one out there 

Generate as many static, dynamic, Bharat or UPI QR codes as you need

With Razorpay, there is no cap on the number of QR codes you can generate. Whether you need to collect a one-time payment or multiple payments, you can generate both static and dynamic QR codes and multiple ones of them. Similarly, you can either opt for a UPI QR code or Bharat QR code, depending on your requirements. Do keep in mind that UPI QR codes can be used for P2P (Person to Person) and P2M (Person to Merchant) transactions both, but Bharat QR codes can be used only for P2M transactions. 

Related Read: How to Generate GST-Compliant Dynamic QR Codes?

Offer multiple payment options to your customers

You needn’t just rely on UPI as a payment method for your customers. With Razorpay multi-payment method QR codes, you can even offer credit and debit cards as a payment mode. 

Integrate your QR codes with POS, billing system, and delivery app 

With Razorpay multi-functional QR codes, you can reconcile payments in real-time for all QR based payments using dashboard reports.  So, if you want to check your payments’ status at any time of the day, your Razorpay dashboard will have all the answers you need. 

Get your own multi-branded QR code with your company name, logo and custom merchant VPA

Now your QR codes will really stand out from the rest as we offer multiple branding options such as including your brand name and logo on the QR code. Even once the customer scans the code, your brand name will appear on the app screen while they make their payment. This helps you create better brand recognition and recall, and allows you to generate a QR code that is truly unique and has your brand presence on it.  Here’s what a branded Razorpay QR code looks like: 

UPI QR code 

Bharat QR code 

Generate QR codes for multiple stores and multiple customers 

If you happen to own multiple stores, you can generate unique QR codes for each of them, or if you want to create one for each customer individually, you can do so too, with Razorpay MultiQR codes. 

Create a QR code in less than 1 min from the Razorpay dashboard

No raising support tickets or filling in long forms to get access to Razorpay QR Codes. You can simply generate one from your Dashboard, print it, and start collecting payments immediately.  Here’s how easy it is to generate a QR code from your Razorpay dashboard: 

Real-time notifications so you can track payments 

Every time you receive a payment via your QR code, you get a notification so you can constantly stay updated with each transaction, without even having to log in to your dashboard. 

Cleaner, simpler, and easy to understand APIs

To make your experience with Razorpay QR Codes smoother, we have ensured that our new APIs are straightforward and easy to use. You only need a single API to create, close, and fetch your QR code. 

      Related read: Types of payment fraud and how to prevent them

So, when do Razorpay QR codes come in handy? 

To collect payments in physical stores 

Like Alok, if you run a retail store, there isn’t a better way to collect contactless payments. You can simply print and paste a QR code at multiple places in your store and invite customers to scan it to make their payment. 

To replace cash on delivery with contactless transactions 

If you run a logistics business like Ankit or an eCommerce one like Pritisha, your delivery agents can now collect payments with zero contact by simply sharing dynamic QR code with customers. These can also be printed on invoices/bills or product packaging to make it easier for customers to scan and pay. 

Related Read: What is eCommerce POS Integration & How to Streamline Offline & Online Sales?

For in-person collection of payments/fees

Alternatively, if you need to collect payments at an event, or for providing professional services, or at an office, or any other public place, you can simply print out your QR code and get people to scan and pay, without the hassles that come with exchanging cash. 

Want to experience the future of QR codes just like Pritisha, Alok, and Ankit? Sign up now to get started with Razorpay MultiQR codes.

(Note: The stories have been crafted based on data on how we see our customer segments use our digital payment solutions to help their consumers.)

7 am: On a rainy day in Mumbai, a busy tea seller is serving piping hot cups of tea. Rain or Sun, a cup of his famous chai with bun-maska is just the right note to start the day. And there’s no need for rain-soaked cash now. Payment links he can generate on the go makes it easy to pay on the go as well.

9 am: In his home overlooking a fast-vanishing lake in Bangalore, an entrepreneur is crouching in front of his computer. It’s been a good month. More students are signing up for their online classes. He needs to know just how good it has been in terms of payments. A click on his payments dashboard shows him all the numbers for the month and the comparison from the previous month. Payments settled, he gets ready to start the new day.

11 am: Miles away, in Ahmedabad, the owner of a healthcare diagnostics firm is fielding calls from their testing centre partners across the country. Their diagnostics and doctor consultation services for elderly citizens are now more needed than ever. But she can’t do it alone. She needs partners in multiple locations to manage the local testing. She has been facing a significant challenge in managing the collections across the centres. Thankfully, today, she has found a solution, with an automated payment collection system. Maybe time to onboard the next set of partners, she wonders.

1 p.m. A small restaurant owner in Coimbatore is looking at the wall clock. Lunchtime. A year ago, his biriyani was the talk of the town and people would line up to have their fill. Now, he wonders how many will make the effort to come all the way to his shop. But, there, he sees his first customer. With the flavours of the biriyani now packed up in an easy to carry box, the customer takes out his wallet. The owner points at his customized QR code. A phone is all the customer needs to make a safe and easy payment.

3 pm: “I could write a story on how people are moving across the cities during the pandemic.” A furniture rental owner thinks to himself. Study tables, beds, television, his team has set up many homes and many dreams over the last year. But for many, the homes are temporary. And with offices not yet opening up, some might prefer to be back in their hometowns.

Which means, processing refunds. A messy job, on the best of days. But, a critical part of his work. He knows many will come back and will again return to their easy to install furniture. He uses the refunds feature on his payment platform to manage the process.

5 pm: “There, all done, now, I think.” A yoga instructor glances through her new yoga teaching website. It has her videos, her short write-ups on yoga lessons from history, a few healthy recipes she whips up and finds her students clamouring for. Youtube had given her an audience and reach. Now, she finds more students wanting to join regular classes with her. The site is her new online home. She adds a payment button to her site. Now students can join the classes and also pay directly as well. All sorted, she gets ready to start her evening batch. 

7 pm: From working with communities to distributing food and medicine to organizing oxygen cylinders during the peak of the 2nd wave of COVID-19, her non-profit organization had been working constantly, on-ground to bring some relief to those most impacted by the pandemic.

Now she sees a bigger need. Find some way to support livelihood options for those most marginalized. She knows just the right partners to scale the work. But mobilizing funds always took time. Now, she sets up her payment page online. She shares details of their past work. And snapshots of their plans. Voila, the first donation, just comes in within hours. 

9 pm: Thriller, check. True Crime, check. Stellar casting, check. The OTT team sits back after releasing their latest new series. This one, they are sure, will pull in the audience.

The trailer is intriguing. The weekend is approaching. What they need is for people to choose the subscription options that work for them. For some, that’s yearly. Others need a monthly one to finish this series and a few more. Thankfully, their payment subscription plan helps them do just that. Let the movie begin.

Also read: Challenges faced by subscription businesses and how to overcome them

Midnight: An old lady opens the door to find her favourite flowers and a healthy carrot cake delivered specially for her. It’s her birthday the next day. There’s a handwritten note. It’s from her daughter, who lives in the US.

An ocean away, her daughter gets the parcel delivered message on her phone and gets ready to wish her mother. Thank God for the D2C brand whose custom made products she loves and which she wanted to share with her mother, can now accept international payments.

Across the country, business owners and their customers alike get ready to call it a day. ‘Digital Payments’ gets ready for the next 24 hours of stories that payments can tell.

Let’s accept it – 2020 was an unprecedented and challenging year for both businesses and consumers. But it did open up multiple opportunities for small businesses while forcing existing titans to look at different modus operandi.

As the world came to a screeching halt due to COVID-19 and forced everyone to stay at home, they were pushed to pay all their bills and make purchases online.

Through this report, we’re taking a look back at the year to capture different trends that online payments saw on the Razorpay platform.

Digital payments in 2020 – The big numbers

• Number of transactions recorded on the Razorpay platform increased by 80% in 2020 against the previous year
• Due to COVID, the number of transactions on Razorpay saw a de-growth from February to April. However, as the economy started opening up, the transactions at the end of December were almost the double of what they were at the beginning of the year

• Razorpay saw a whooping 252% growth in the number of our business partners who transacted on the platform and 176% growth in the end users who used Razorpay for their online purchases or paying bills in 2020 against the previous year
• Though the lockdown forced many businesses to go online and opened up new opportunities for some, it also had a bad impact on many businesses by forcing them to shut their operations. Since April 2020 was a month of no operation, the number of transacting merchants on the Razorpay platform saw a de-growth of 6.7% in that month. But things started to open up slowly in mid-May and people also started moving to digital platforms for payments. Due to this, the number of businesses on the platform increased by almost 155% by the end December

• Overall, in 2020, Razorpay saw 265% year-on-year growth in onboarding new businesses

Tier 2 & 3 cities saw a spike in digital payments

1. Since many people moved to their hometown, the contribution of Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities increased to 55% in 2020 against 49% in 2019
2. Karnataka maintained its top spot with a contribution of 23% in 2020, despite a dip of 5% from 2019. Karnataka was followed by Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi & Tamil Nadu. Together these 5 states contributed to around 80% of the overall transactions recorded on the platform. The number of transactions from Rajasthan and West Bengal grew by more than 100% in 2020 against the previous year
3. Bangalore retained the tag of the most digitised city in India with a contribution of 27%. Other cities such as Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune seemed to be slowly catching up with Bangalore, since its contribution reduced by 6 percentage points as compared to 2019

Related read: Digital Payments in India

Financial services benefited, travels suffered in 2020

The year 2020 shook the dynamics within numerous sectors. While some saw a spike in interest, others took a severe hit. 

• The financial services industry came out as a winner in 2020. It saw an increase of 118% in the number of digital transactions from the year 2019. Clearly, the pandemic has driven investors’ interest to the capital market. Lending, mutual funds and insurance were the top subcategories under financial services

• The lockdown gave gamers more time to spend playing games online. Gamers indulged in fantasy leagues for the most part of 2020. The gaming industry came out as the runner up with the second highest number of transactions among sectors. The industry saw a 246% hike in transactions from 2019
• With the no-contact rule in place, people moved from cash to digital transactions for their day-to-day bill payments. Digital transactions in the utilities sector peaked in the month of April and has been gradually growing ever since

• The e-commerce industry, after a minor slump in the month of April, recovered to see a dramatic increase in transactions. This can be attributed to the fact that more and more companies have realised the importance of having digital modes of payments, resulting in an increasing number of businesses and transactions

• The social sector also saw a rise of about 89% in 2020. With most people confined to their houses, they seemed to have spent more time online browsing and finding prospective partners 

• Other sectors like edtech, healthcare, IT and software, NGOs and Government bodies proved to be winners in 2020 where the transactions shot up during and are still gradually increasing

While the pandemic resulted in positive growth for some industries, let’s also look at some others that were negatively impacted. 

• Tours & travel, and logistics industries were deeply hit because of the restriction on movement of people and goods during the pandemic. On the bright side, these sectors are gradually improving owing to the relaxations

• The food and beverages industry saw a similar trend in transactions. After a dramatic dip in April, this sector has also been gradually recovering

UPI rules the roost once again

• • 2020 was a year of disruption for the industry since new payment methods took over the traditional ones. UPI overthrew cards and bagged the spot of the most preferred payment method with a contribution of 47% in terms of number of transactions. Though the highest number of transactions were made through UPI, most of these transactions were of a lower ticket size as compared to cards
• Coming to cards, debit cards is the top contributor with a share of 76%, followed by credit cards at 22% and prepaid cards at 2%. Prepaid card transactions have seen a huge jump of 112% compared to 2019

• Almost all payment methods saw a decline in the April to June quarter but things came back to normal after July

• NACH and PayLater were the other 2 payment modes that grew by more than 100x in 2020
• Wallets also grew significantly in 2020 compared to the previous year due to multiple offers run by wallet players

Razorpay products that won 2020

• Smart Collect, Payment Links and Payment Pages were the top products that grew more than 5x in 2020 against 2019.
• Contribution of Payment Gateway in terms of transactions reduced by 5 percentage points in 2020 due to the massive growth of our no-code payment products.
• As a part of the #NoCodeMovement, we launched Payment Button in the 2nd half of 2020. It started fetching attention since its launch and became the fastest-growing product in our stack.
• We also launched UPI Autopay in collaboration with NPCI in 2020.

What to expect in 2021

1. As per NPCI data, UPI crossed 2 billion transactions in October and is expected to hit the 1 billion transactions per day mark in 2-3 years. Uses such as retail investing for IPOs and Autopay have already been added to UPI and with NPCI adding new use cases, digital payments will see a boost in the coming year
2. While the pandemic has given a big boost to online payments in Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities, there is still a lot more room for growth as smaller businesses from these cities come online
3. Newer payment methods like CRED Pay and Buy Now Pay Later are also expected to gain momentum

Couldn’t attend the webinar? Missed out on some interesting points? Don’t worry because we are here with a summary of all that went down in this edition of Unlock Growth. From personal anecdotes to business lessons, we will try to cover everything in this article.

The #UnlockGrowth webinar hosted two of the most well-known and reliable names in the start-up space – Ankur Warikoo, Co-founder and Board Member of Nearbuy.com, and Harshil Mathur, Co-founder and CEO at Razorpay. The conversation between these industry experts was moderated by Vedanarayan Vedantham, Razorpay’s SME Business Head. 

Looking back at entrepreneurial journeys

Ankur Warikoo and Harshil Mathur have both witnessed landmark successes in their respective entrepreneurial ventures. Starting from scratch often requires a lot of grit and determination, because the path is paved with uncertainties and hurdles. The webinar saw the two panelists recounting their experiences to shed light on some important lessons they learned along the way.

Ankur Warikoo’s Journey

Back in 2008, Ankur was a consultant before the passion of starting something of his own hit him in 2011. That is when Groupon came into the picture and simultaneously, in India. The high point of his journey was in 2015 when they bought the Groupon India business to start Nearbuy.

Surprisingly, his career’s lowest and most challenging point was just nine months after their funding in 2015. Recounts Ankur, “Back then, we were facing a massive financial crunch after making some terrible choices and the cash was burning. We had to take the hard call of laying off 20% of our workers. It wasn’t their fault at all, but the decision had to be made.”

The business took this decision with the utmost procedure and care. When people were laid off, they tried to find them other jobs, help with their resumes, and attempted to provide a severance package. But Ankur’s most significant learning lies here. He says, “I learned that laying off is never about the job but about self-respect.” 

Harshil Mathur’s Journey

For Harshil Mathur, the objective was clear from the very beginning. As soon as he passed out of his college, IIT-Roorkee, in 2013, he started working on Razorpay. Accompanied by his co-founder Shashank Kumar, Harshil wanted to help startups accept payments as the then-existing system was suboptimal and not suited for start-up needs.

The toughest part for him was the waiting time. He explains, “We spent a lot of time – almost one year – in getting bank approvals. There was a time when everything was ready but we couldn’t take the product live as we were waiting on banks.” After approaching some 50-100 bankers, the team found the bank that agreed to go live with them.

But Harshil considers it all a part of the process. It was then that Razorpay got into Y-Combinator, the ace start-up accelerator, and started scaling their business. 

Finding the right partner

A very important part of many entrepreneurial journeys is deciding on the right partner or co-founder. Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, co-founders at Razorpay, were part of the same group in their college. Harshil remarks that he got lucky with his co-founder. Finding a co-founder is much like finding a spouse because the founders have to share a long journey together. 

He gives a particularly important advice to people thinking about selecting a co-founder. 

“People often look for a particular skill set in a co-founder like sales, programming or marketing. You can hire employees for these aspects. A co-founder should share the vision with you. Look for someone who you know and understand well, someone who will share your worldview and can give you an efficient counterview”, says Harshil.

The ‘aha’ moment for businesses

Businesses often look for that one moment where an idea clicks or a product succeeds, and everything changes for the good. We tried to decode that if there is such a moment that unlocks growth for businesses.

Ankur Warikoo told the audience that a business’s journey is filled with a combination of good and bad news. Entrepreneurs often struggle to find that moment.

Ankur tells the audience, “The trick lies in looking for the ‘aha’ moment around customers, rather than around growth. If you crack that one insight about your audience, then growth unlocks itself.”

His biggest aha moment was around trust. Their team realized that India is a trust-poor country, living on the principle of “dal me kuch kala hai”. Nearbuy being a deals and discounts platform, always induced doubt within people. Thus, he had to focus on building trust and reliance more than anything else.

Harshil says that his aha moment was not an instance but a piece of advice from Y-Combinator. The suggestion was simple: make something a few people really want instead of something many people somewhat want.

Unlock Growth in the era of COVID and beyond

The world, as we know, has undergone a massive shift in the last eight months. The pandemic has changed the business landscape, made existing operations obsolete, and brought in new technologies. We asked our panelists if there are some tips and insights to unlock growth in these times with so much going on.

Ankur’s TMT model

Ankur shared an interesting mental model he uses, especially in times like these. He calls it the TMT model standing for Time, Money, and Trust. According to him, a consumer’s financial interaction with a business is about three things – the time they have, the money they own, and the trust they possess. 

During the lockdown, people had a lot of time on their hands, but due to layoffs, pay-cuts, and financial slowdown, money wasn’t something they had enough of. Similarly, doubts about safety, social distancing, and the outside world made them deficient in their trust in businesses.

Thus, Ankur says that the businesses that flourished were the ones who identified people were time-rich, money-deficient, and trust-poor.

[bctt tweet=”This is why we saw industries like content (TikTok, Instagram Reels, Netflix, Prime Video) and subscription-based edtech flourishing. They offered a way to kill free time from the safety of your home, with low money involvement.” username=”Razorpay”]

Harshil’s ‘opportunity in adversity’ mantra

For Harshil, the approach is different. He says an entrepreneur must focus on finding the next best opportunity when an unforeseen hurdle hits you. Taking Razorpay’s example, he explained that travel contributed to 30-40% of the business. When travel was hit during COVID, this chunk suddenly disappeared.

However, the team at Razorpay realized that the COVID-19 pandemic presented an exciting opportunity as it became a great time for gaming, edtech, grocery, and e-commerce industries. Says Harshil, “Entrepreneurship is nothing but being smart about what the world throws at you”. The trick to success lies in finding opportunities in adverse times and leveraging them effectively.

Tips for monetizing your passion

Content creation is something that Ankur Warikoo has been doing for the past four years, in the capacity of a CEO as well as independently. He told us, “When Covid struck, I wanted to reimagine myself as a content creator. I wanted to take this time to diversify and help others more. This is when I decided to explore live webinars”.

Within three months, Warikoo had organized and conducted almost 18 webinars, with hundreds of people coming in every time. In addition to webinars, he also had courses around Career Growth, Public Speaking, and Start-Ups on his website. 

Bringing in the revenue with Razorpay

Ankur says, “A large part of credit for my content’s monetary success goes to Razorpay. Earlier, I had to call up a coder and ask them to make a payment page. Then, my wife – who herself was accepting payments via Razorpay – told me a way out”. All of Ankur Warikoo’s webinars and courses are also via the Razorpay payment suite.

What lies ahead

The era of influencers

Ankur is very confident about the fact that the next decade will show the world its first solo employee unicorn. This means that just one person will establish their personal brand in such a way that it surpasses even big corporations. This can be anyone – a gamer, a fashion influencer, a guide, or a teacher.

This will primarily happen because today, corporations are not stronger than individuals. Nowadays, big consumer decisions are spearheaded by influencers. People are listening to individuals with a strong personal brand. As our witty moderator, Vedanarayana, put it in the webinar, “David has a chance against Goliath.”

A transformed payment and business landscape

Harshil remarks that the pandemic accelerated some trends that would have otherwise taken 2-5 years to materialize. As an example, he says, “Traditional institutions like schools were not open to online payments till early this year. They were very happy getting their fee via cash and cheques. But with the pandemic as studies went online, so did the process of accepting payments”.

Another amazing transformation will be seen in individual entrepreneurs, especially on social media. Digital payments on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, are rising day by day. 

[bctt tweet=”The pandemic has made entrepreneurs realize that online commerce not just for techies and big brands. It is for anyone who has a product, a platform, and a way to accept payments.” username=”Razorpay”]

Unlock Growth 2.0 – Ending note

We hope the insights from our latest #UnlockGrowth webinar helped you to better understand the complex times we are living in. The recording for the webinar is available below, in case you’d like to hear the panel yourself. Please feel free to get in touch with us, if you have any questions for us.

Till then, keep growing and thriving. Unlock growth for your business with Razorpay!

[bctt tweet=”Infact, about 11 million subscribers in India paid for 21 million video subscriptions in 2019. This was estimated to increase significantly by 2020.” username=”Razorpay”]

This growth can be attributed to the creation of customized packages for OTT users based on their consumption, thereby cutting costs. Shift of daily needs brands to subscription models has also accelerated the consumption. Other reasons could be the increase in original content, and free and trial access to the platforms for a limited period.

We, at Razorpay, are continuously trying to empower businesses with powerful technology. Read what’s been cooking within the teams here to upscale the Subscription experience for our customers. 

What are subscriptions

Subscriptions are the recurring payments made to businesses in accordance with a predetermined schedule that customers sign up for. These types of payments are processed electronically, usually from a customer’s preferred mode of payment – credit or debit card, bank account, physical mandates and UPI.

Depending on the payment gateway that a business uses, they can give their customers the option to set up recurring payments using different payment modes. These subsequent payments are scheduled and deducted from customer’s authorised bank accounts without the need for manual intervention. 

[Also Read: 9 Steps to Starting Your Subscriptions Business]

Razorpay Subscriptions at a glance 

Razorpay Subscriptions offer quick and easy integration for businesses. With a single integration, you can go live on all modes of a recurring payment, something that none of our competitors offers.

It is one of the easiest products to use and is designed for businesses of all types. 

It offers multiple modes of setting up recurring payments for customers such as recurring on cards, and UPI mandates.

You can go live instantly by using subscription links via the Razorpay Dashboard or integrate our APIs to give a seamless experience to your customers.

Wondering what are the features that set Razorpay apart from all the other Subscriptions service providers? Here are some of the features of Razorpay Subscriptions:

• Avail industry best success rates on credit cards with Razorpay’s homegrown banking solutions
• Beat the competitive pricing and get industry-best plans with Razorpay
• Accept payments from across the globe with utmost ease
• Make the best of open APIs, easy and quick integrations and 100% online processes
• 24*7 support by our payment experts
• One-time sign up to avail all of the Razorpay products 
• One point integration to offer multiple payment options to your customers

Related Read: What is Recurring Billing? – Types, Advantages, and Examples

Introducing Pause-A-Subscription

While it is true that all of us are in some form or other hooked to the ease subscription model offers, there might come a time when a subscriber might consider canceling one. 

Some of the reasons an individual might consider canceling a subscription can be: 

• To cut down on the increasing costs and manage finances
• Because they aren’t using the service as frequently
• Traveling often and aren’t able to make use of the services
• Service is seasonal (e.g., a sports streaming service)

Since most of the reasons mentioned above look temporary in nature, it is important to provide your subscribers with an alternative. No business likes to lose out on a customer, after all. One of the ways to keep your customers with you while delighting them is by giving them an option to Pause a Subscription. 

How to pause Razorpay Subscriptions

If you are already using Razorpay Subscriptions, you can pause the subscription immediately or at the end of the current billing cycle. To pause a subscription from your Razorpay Dashboard, simply follow the steps mentioned below: 

1. Log into your Dashboard and navigate to ‘Subscriptions’
2. Click the ‘Subscription Id’ you want to pause
3. Click ‘Pause Subscription’. The subscription will be paused immediately
4. Click ‘Yes, Pause Now’ on the pop-up that appears

The short animation below shows you how to pause a subscription.

Just like you can choose to pause a subscription for your customers, you can also resume their subscriptions instantly. To resume a subscription, follow the mentioned steps:

1. Log into your Dashboard and navigate to ‘Subscriptions’
2. Click the ‘Subscription Id’ you want to resume
3. Click ‘Resume Subscription’. The subscription is resumed immediately
4. Click ‘Yes, Resume Now’ on the pop-up that appears

The short animation below shows you how to resume a subscription.

[Suggested Reading: The Evolution of the Subscription Economy In India]

Benefits of pausing a subscription

[bctt tweet=”Research shows that around 10% of customers who cancel auto-renewal would actually just prefer to pause their subscriptions ​if it was an option.” username=”Razorpay”]

This means you can recover some of the revenue that would otherwise be lost without any additional cost.

Here are some examples of how offering this alternative to customers could benefit your business: 

• Reduce churn: Win back some of the customers who cancel and later forget to re-subscribe. When given the alternative to pause, most customers are less likely to cancel.
• Reduce spillage: Subscriptions facing a payment issue are likely to get resolved eventually. Till the time they get resolved, the services can be paused instead of getting banished completely.
• Get insights: Learn why customers are pausing and use those reasons to influence packaging, pricing, promotions, lead management, etc. by asking quick and easy questions on the go.
• Improve experience: Let your customers feel at ease. Reduce the burden of re-filling the information when they wish to resume the subscription later.

Offering a pause subscription option to your subscribers will not only help you manage voluntary churn, but it will also help gather valuable insights on why customers want to discontinue. This information can, in turn, help you reduce marketing costs to win them back​. 

In the end, this will lead to increased customer satisfaction, as subscribers will be able to return to the services they like more easily​, and it will also likely lead to overall increased revenue.

For whom is this feature built

For every business that is striving to grow! The subscription economy has changed the way consumers used to shop, and it is only going to evolve more. Statistics and consumer behaviour suggest that the subscription economy is here to stay. And when we know it, it only makes sense to find a quality add-on to ensure customers are at ease. 

Listed below are some of the use cases where pause a subscription can make a massive impact:

• Dairy products business that delivers milk, curd, eggs on a daily basis to people. Customers can request the assigned team to pause a subscription in case they are travelling or cutting down on dairy products for some time and resume when they wish to. 
• OTT platforms. Viewers can choose to pause a subscription until the next cricket tournament starts and resume easily without facing the hassles of creating an account all over again.
• Rental furniture service providers often ask individuals to do a detailed KYC process. It can happen that an individual is planning to visit overseas for four months and does not wish to pay for the due time. They can simply contact the service provider, ask them to pause the subscription and collect the provided furniture. They can resume the services once they are back.

[Recommended Reading: UPI AutoPay: A Powerful Addition to Your Payment Options Bouquet]

In conclusion

Providing an excellent customer experience is paramount for any business looking to retain subscribers in today’s competitive landscape. Offering your customers with an option to pause a service for a specific time is one powerful way to do that.  

Let us know the other challenges you face while running your subscription-based business, and our teams will try to ensure that you are at ease.

While for a customer, this can lead to annoyance and irritations, for businesses, the impact could be much larger – not only the loss of a customer but also a loss in the brand image on social media platforms.

One of the reasons to cause this highly-dreaded event is a phenomenon called Late Authorization or Late Auth.

It is worth noting that even such an extremely rare event (less than 0.5% of transactions), can affect the brand’s perception in the market. And, this is not even something the business owner was responsible for!

In John Wooden’s words, “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”

What causes late authorization?

Consider the image below to understand what is late auth.

You or someone you know must have faced this at some point while making an online purchase or while booking a ticket. 

To understand what causes Late Auth in the first place, we need a quick crash course on an online payment flow. Now, let’s look at how a small break in the above flow causes your customer’s transaction to fail despite the amount getting debited. This typically happens because of network issues at the bank’s end. 

Late auth, like bad weather, is not anybody’s fault and cannot be quickly done away with. However, like an umbrella or a raincoat (for bad weather), there are tools that businesses can use to handle this situation in a much better way when it occurs.

[bctt tweet=”Late auth, like bad weather, is not anybody’s fault and cannot be quickly done away with. However, there are tools that businesses can use to handle this situation.” username=”Razorpay”]

At Razorpay, we are focused on working on every little thing that affects a business. To help businesses deal with the challenges faced due to late auth, we have a solution. We are introducing the Capture Settings feature by Razorpay – a tool to tackle late auth payments. 

Handling late authorized payments using Capture Settings

As mentioned above, only around 0.5% of payments are late authorized. What’s interesting that most of these payments are actually authorized within an hour. To understand this in a simplified way, consider the charts below.

Razorpay Capture Settings enables our partner businesses to provide improved customer experience by merely controlling how they presently capture payments.

[bctt tweet=”Razorpay Capture Settings enables businesses to provide improved customer experience by merely controlling how they presently capture payments.” username=”Razorpay”]

Now, let’s take a look at some of the use cases of Razorpay Capture Setting and understand how this can help your business in the long run. We will also be talking as to how some of the top businesses from different industries are using this feature to handle late authorizations.

Use case 01 – Auto capture all payments

With Razorpay Capture Settings set to “Auto Capture All Payments”, all the transactions will be automatically captured as long as authorization happens within five days of the transaction.

The Auto Capture All Payments feature is especially useful when:

• Average transaction value is not small 
• Product or service can be provided even if there is a delay between the time of order and time of payment

Example 01 – Mutual funds services provider & wealth management companies 

Let’s assume that a customer wants to invest INR 20,000 in a particular fund. Now, as they initiate the process, money gets debited from their account. However, the payment hasn’t been authorized yet. 

In this case, with such a high transaction amount, it will be disastrous to tell the customer that the transaction has ‘failed‘ and ‘any amount debited will be auto-refunded in X working days.’

[Suggested read: The Era of Instant Refunds]

It makes sense to capture the payment when the authorization happens (even if it is authorized on T+2/T+3) as long as the customer has not made another successful payment for the same order. A better message for the customer could be “Payment Pending. If the amount has been deducted, please check back after 1 hour.”

Example 02: E-commerce companies 

Imagine that a customer makes a payment of INR 15,000 for a mobile phone available at 50% off during a festive sale. The payment is late authorized. The e-commerce company can show the message “Your order is pending. Please wait for 30 minutes before trying again.” Alternatively, the e-commerce company can choose to convert the order to ‘Cash or card on delivery’.  

Since e-commerce businesses can wait till the time of delivery to accept payments, capturing all payments makes sense.

The above two examples shed some light on how Auto Capture All Payments can offer businesses the highest amount of control over their payments. It also enables them to process refunds much faster. Aforementioned is the reason why this is the default setting for all Razorpay business partners. 

Please note: Businesses can always use ‘Orders API’ to override the default settings on a case to case basis.

While we would highly recommend staying with the default settings, some certain unique scenarios and businesses would need to customize how their payments are being captured. 

For these scenarios where “automatically capturing payments” will not work, businesses can use the Capture Settings feature to customize capture timeouts and therefore better process refunds. This feature can be found in the ‘settings’ section of the Razorpay dashboard.

Use Case 02: Capture timeout

Business Scenario: Businesses where the price of a product varies with time (e.g., flight tickets).

Let’s take the example of a travel business to understand this better. A travel portal can use Razorpay Capture Settings feature to handle late authorizations. 

Let’s assume their systems are configured to block a seat for a maximum of 20 minutes. By configuring a capture timeout of ’20 minutes’, the portal will automatically fail any payment that is authorized later than 20 minutes and will automatically initiate a refund for the same. This will ensure the best payment experience for all your customers.

Use Case 03: Manual capture 

Business Scenario: Businesses where the payment cannot be accepted until inventory availability is confirmed

The Manual Capture feature is especially common when:

• Core functionality is dealing with fresh foods delivery 
• Aggregators and marketplaces where the business accepting the payment is different from the business delivering the service 

In the above cases, businesses can use the Razorpay Capture Settings to define manual capture. This enables them to capture the payment only after verifying that the inventory is available and the customer can be serviced.

In conclusion

Late auth is a rare event that unfortunately cannot be done away with. However, businesses can improve customer experience when it does happen by controlling how they capture payments. 

Razorpay has already set default settings to Auto Capture All Payments, which is the best option for most businesses. It provides maximum control over payments and enables faster refunds.

However, for specific unique scenarios like flight bookings and fresh foods delivery, businesses can choose to use Razorpay Capture Settings feature to customize how they capture payments. 

In a world that is more than ever connected thanks to social media, let your customers spread the word about how delightful the payments experience was.

Empower your business with Razorpay Capture Setting and get set to build a base of happy customers!