Rewards-Based Payments App TWID Raises $1.4 Mn Seed Funding

Bengaluru-headquartered digital payments app TWID announced that it has raised $1.4 Mn (INR 10 Cr) in a seed funding round from SCV LLC. SCV LLC is a family office of first-generation entrepreneurs who have built, scaled and exited several technology firms in the US and India.

The company’s existing investors include marquee investors like YourNest Fund, Whiteboard Capital, and Capillary Technologies. It plans to use the funds to onboard more than 50 brands and banks with their rewards pool, over 300K  merchant base to accept TWID as a mode of payment and over 3 Mn active users to transact using TWID.

Founded in June 2019 by Amit Koshal, Rishi Batra and Amit Sharma, TWID is a payment platform which enables users to keep track of all their loyalty memberships, total points, their worth, next expiry, transaction history, etc.

The company said that all these points become much bigger together when clubbed in a single account. The clubbed rewards are then used as a form of payment for every kind of expense through the app.

The company claims to leverage best-in-class frameworks to analyse customer behaviour, and their spending patterns for providing solutions, whereas its learning algorithms enhance the recommendations to customers with predictive analytics.

In a media statement, founder of SCV LLC said, “In the US, the rewards ecosystem is compelling and completely consumer-centric. As India’s consumption story evolves along with a rising middle class who are price-sensitive, rewards will be the key differentiator for retailers and service providers alike.”

The company envisions emerging as a scalable solution acquainting every bank, brand, and customer to this new mode of payment.

According to NITI Aayog’s “Digital Payments (2018 edition)”, India’s digital payments industry is estimated to grow to $1 Tn by 2023. It also suggested that the value of digital payments will likely jump from the current 10% to over 25% by 2023.

The yearly RBI bulletin of Payment system indicators showed the growth of debit cards on PoS, which was 32% increase in the volume of transactions via debit cards on PoS, reaching 4.4 Bn in 2018-19 from 3.3 Bn in 2017-18. The value of transactions increase was nearly 29% reaching INR 5934.75 Bn in 2018-19.

In terms of digital payments, TWID is competing against industry leaders such as Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay etc. However, in terms of rewards for each transaction and collection of such points, TWID competes against premium credit card bill payment startup, Cred.

Launched in 2018 by Kunal Shah, Cred is a members-only app which gives exclusive rewards for paying your credit card bill in a timely manner. Eligible users with good credit scores can use the app to understand and navigate their credit card statements, particularly with regard to hidden charges, and they are rewarded accordingly.

As one of the hottest sectors of the Indian startup ecosystem, fintech has been bringing investor as well as customer attention. According to DataLabs by Inc42, between 2015 and H1 2019, the total investment in Indian fintech startups was $8.23 Bn with a total deal count of 562.