Earlier this year, Razorpay acquired payments platform Ezetap for $200 million—its biggest so far— which will help the company expand into the offline market. Ezetap accepts all physical payment modes like cards, mobile wallets, biometric-based, QR code-based, payments via messaging apps, etc.
The fintech platform is eyeing the offline segment after establishing itself in the online space since 2013. “Our offline expansion strategy is very clear and our recent acquisition of Ezetap is in tune with that. It’s a significant player in the offline market which is a completely new market for us,” Rahul Kothari, Chief Business Officer, Razorpay told Business Today.
He said there’s a lot of competition in the offline payments space from players like Pine Labs and Mswipe but that doesn’t keep him on his toes. “Instead of being bothered by the competition, we’re more focused on how to create a very serious omni-channel offering for our merchants. Today it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to have a separate online and offline partners because they want to have a 360 degree view of the customer. They also want to have a very similar experience when they have both online and offline payments,” he added.
Kothari said that end customers want to leverage the same kind of rewards in offline payments that they get online. “With that strategy, these are the new markets we’re looking at in addition to having a very strong omni-channel payments experience because that’s the direction in which the entire payments industry would move,” he said.
The fintech platform has close to 8 million registered merchants and around 90 per cent of them are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) while 5-7 per cent is mid-market companies. “Going forward we see more growth in the SME segment than the enterprise segment,” Kothari added.
In December last year, Razorpay became the most valuable fintech start-up in India, with a valuation of $7.5 billion. In addition to expanding its offline offering, it will also focus on its 2-year-old neo-banking business going forward. “In neo-banking business we help merchants manage money and that has different kind of offerings ranging from current accounts, to payrolls to forex, FD, payouts, etc. This is more about managing money and then we have a capital business in which we provide working capital loans to the merchants. These new businesses are primarily focused on mid and smaller businesses,” he said.
Also read: Paytm, Razorpay, Cashfree, Easebuzz in soup as ED freezes Rs 46.67 cr from the cos’ bank account
Also read: The cancellation of the PayU-BillDesk deal is a loss not just for its investors, but has broader lessons too
