Digital Payment Gateway Razorpay Launches Unified Payment Interface

Bengaluru-based payment gateway Razorpay has launched Unified Payment Interface (UPI). It claims to be India’s first payment gateway to do so. The new payment option will allow Razorpay’s users to access online payments via UPI with added services like netbanking, wallets, and credit/debit cards as well.

In August 2016, the RBI in conjunction with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI),  launched the UPI in India. UPI is a one-touch transaction for transferring money between any two parties using a ‘unique virtual address’ on a smartphone. Once a beneficiary is added to the address, an MPIN ensures transaction within seconds.

Commenting on the development, Harshil Mathur, co-founder and CEO, Razorpay said, “In keeping with our robust technology, our systems will automatically update this option for our entire merchant base. Merchants need not worry about integrating extra lines of code to offer UPI. Anyone with a mobile phone and a bank account will be able to benefit from UPI for transacting money online. This is a major change for online commerce as UPI will allow merchants reduce transaction costs and create a faster checkout experience.”

The UPI follows the IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) structure of payments. IMPS transactions allow real-time 24×7 transfer of money between parties with the use of IFSC codes and MMID. Razorpay’s merchants will be able to receive payments via UPI from today.

Established in 2014, by Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur, Razorpay claims to have 10,000+ merchants. It is a payments platform for companies who want to run their business online. The company helps businesses accept online payments via credit card, debit card, net banking and wallets from their end customers.

Till date, it has raised a total capital of $11.5 Mn from a clutch of investors like Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, and YCombinator. The last round of funding was in October 2015, wherein it raised $9 Mn from Tiger Global and Matrix Partners. The startup, which was incubated at Silicon Valley’s startup accelerator YCombinator, had earlier raised $2.5 Mn (INR 16 Cr) in seed funding from Matrix Partners, Y Combinator and 33 other angel investors.

In July 2016, Razorpay announced that it was collaborating with MasterCard to speed up the adoption of online and mobile payments among small businesses in India. In August 2016, it launched a service called ‘Flash Checkout’ that claimed to cut down transaction time by 60% when the card is saved with Razorpay.