Ever since its inception PayUmoney has been working to create a safe and secure ecosystem that enables digital payments, bringing convenience and trust through continuous technology innovation. With its state-of-the-art payment gateway solutions the company has enabled small businesses to grow online. Here are the edited excerpts of SMEpost.com’s conversation with PayUmoney SMB Head Abhishek Tripathi.
Q: What are the key emerging trends that PayUmoney foresee in the backdrop of the growing internet user base in India?
A: India is all set to overtake US as the second largest market for smartphones in the world. We fundamentally believe that payments in any country is a massive problem to solve and especially in a country with such a large consumer base, there are numerous opportunities to trivialize payments. The consumer base is growing with each passing day. This large number of consumers would need a large number of avenues to buy, shop, recharge and pay online. With this as the background, we are gearing up by empowering as many as possible SME merchants to start accepting payments online to cater to the needs to the growing consumer base.
Another key trend we are witnessing is the narrowing of the gap between the conventional offline banking system and the new age digital payment method. Banks have started integrating with online payment giants like PayU who believe in a ‘digital first’ banking strategy to simplify payments and financial services for everyone.
Q: In your opinion, how fast is the concept of online payment catching up with MSMEs in India?
A: With the onset of the ecommerce boom that stated around a decade back, the way MSMEs traded changed forever. With more and more people resorting to buying online, thanks to the whooping cashbacks, discounts and variety of products to choose from, it became essential for MSMEs to adapt to the changing mood of the Indian consumers.
By adopting the online payment system which has been the backbone of the e commerce boom, MSMEs are now recording many folds growth in terms of their consumers and revenue.
Q: How is PayUmoney enabling merchants conduct M-commerce?
A: To enable more and more merchants conduct M- commerce, PayUmoney specially designed a mobile app which provides an end to end solution to the merchants. Starting from the on boarding process to providing them a list of tools to choose from while accepting online payments, everything happens on the app itself.
We wanted to make it easy for even the smallest of the merchant who might not be having a desktop or laptop to complete the process. This has helped even merchants who run their business from their houses and the remotest parts of the country. All they have to do is to login in to the app, follow some simple steps and they are all set to sell their products online at no set up cost at all.
Q: How does PayUmoney keep up with buyer’s protection?
A: This has been one of the most talked about USPs of PayUmoney. PayUmoney is the only online payment company which provides a special buyer’s protection for the benefit of its consumers as well as merchants.
We make sure that till the time the exact product reaches the consumer, the money paid by the consumer is not released to the merchant. This also generates more trust in the consumers for the merchants using PayUmoney. Every year around 8-10 percent of the total transactions are settled through PayUmoney
Q: Please throw some insight on the process of onboarding sellers by PayUmoney.
A: PayUmoney has designed unique multi-channel ways to onboard sellers. The three primary ways through which PayUmoney is on boarding merchants is via call, through website and through app. These ways cater to almost all the categories of merchants.
We even use the missed call facility to onboard a merchant. All he has to do is to give us a missed call and we call him back within hours to help him set up his online business within no time. We are increasing the way to onboard the merchants with eve
Q: What are various solutions offered by PayUmoney to small merchants?
A: PayUmoney has designed 7 special tools like Webfront, E mail invoice, Webstore, Events and SMS invoice tools to cater to the needs of all kinds of merchants in addition to unique buyer protection cover.
Email invoice – Merchant is into travel business and use our email invoice service to collect payment from his clients for bus, train, hotel and flight booking. And instead of going to client he sends invoice and collect payment.
Web front – Merchant is into tiffin food business and collects monthly payment from his customer using PayUmoney web front.
Web store – Merchant does not have any website but he sells Camera lenses and Cameras using our web store. This is much economical as didn’t want to build website for only selling cameras online.
SMS Invoice – Merchant has a bakery and he use our SMS invoice to collect payments on orders. Merchant uses PayUmoney service instead of cash on delivery
Events – Merchant into organizing events and use our event module to collect payments from attendees by sharing the link on facebook and twitter/other SM
PayUmoney App – Merchant doing transaction using our offline feature for selling snacks, much convenient and economical rather than getting a POS
PayUmoney Button – Merchant sells product on website and using PayUmoney button feature to collect payment against transactions. Since the number of Products/SKUs are very less he didn’t want the website integration rather button which offers a seamless experience like integration.
Q: What is the profile of enterprises availing PayUmoney solutions?
A: We cater to all categories of merchants. Our merchant can be a big online retailer such as Haldiram, it can be a housewife selling cup cakes as well and it can be a newspaper vendor too, using our tools to collect online payment. The tools have been designed in such a way that all kinds of merchants can find the tool matching to their requirement.
Q: What are the key initiatives that PayUmoney has undertaken in educating MSMEs including Start Ups about the benefits of M-commerce?
A: We understand that there are still lot of merchants who are unaware about the advantages of the m- commerce business. We are reaching out to these merchants through our special master class series under which we have already conducted sessions in various cities across India. Under these MasterClasses we educate the merchants about the advantages about the m- commerce business.
We also hold a series of founder story sessions too in which successful entrepreneurs share their success stories to educate and encourage new merchants / startups.
