plutos One Bags $2 Mn To Facilitate Banks With Digital Bill Payments

Bharat Bill Payment System’s (BBPS) technology service provider plutos One has secured $2 Mn (around INR 16.8 Cr) in a seed funding round led by StartupXseed.

The round also saw participation from Genesia Ventures, Auxano Capital and Raghuvanshi Investments among others.

The Delhi-based company plans to deploy the fresh capital to onboard banks as biller operating units as well as agent institutions on the BBPS network, said the company in a release.

Biller operating units are RBI-authorised entities, acting as a payment collector on the BBPS network. 

Managed by the National Payments Corporation of India, BBPS is an integrated bill payment infrastructure that enables customers to make recurring online bill payments via physical payment collection outlets (bank branches, agent collection stores etc) and digital channels (apps, websites etc) across India.

“As licensed and empaneled technical service providers to the Bharat Bill Payments System, we are uniquely positioned to help banks connect their business and individual customers to digital bill payments,” said plutos One’s cofounder and chief executive officer Rajjat Gulati.

Founded by Gulati and Rohit Mahajan in 2022, plutos One offers a suite of products and services for banks to facilitate efficient bill payment solutions to their customers. The startup also claims to offer biller solutions, including BBPS onboarding process, settlements, refund and support.

Additionally, it also offers vouchers across more than 400 online brands on its platform.

Along with NPCI, the startup claims to have partnered with banks, including HDFC, BOBCard, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bandhan Bank, Loylty Rewardz, IDFC First Bank and  IDBI Bank.

This comes close on the heels of the Reserve Bank of India reportedly mandating all credit card bill payments made via third party apps such as CRED, PhonePe, Amazon Pay and Paytm be routed through BBPS.

For instance, last week fintech unicorn CRED joined BBPS as a customer operating unit to facilitate its users with instant credit card bill payments. 

Currently BBPS claims to have 22,000 active billers on its platform across 30 categories including electricity, water, loan repayments, credit card bills, rent payments, education fees, donations to charitable institutions, metro card recharges, FASTag and more.