Digital payments startup Instamojo rolls out UPI for its 1.5 lakh merchant base

Digital payments and commerce company Instamojo.com on Monday announced the launch of UPI on its platform. Partnering with ICICI Bank, the digital platform will enable users to now collect payments via UPI across its more than 150,000 user base.

This is not the first solution to integrate with UPI. Last week, payment gateway Razorpay launched the UPI for its merchants, numbering in excess of 10,000, on the platform.

Announced in February this year, UPI, with its mobile-first payments design, allows interoperability while enabling person to business and business to person payments, giving the ability to pay as well as ‘collect’ payments from someone. All this functions through a virtual payment address like xyz@icici, without giving away or jeopardising your personal credentials.

Currently being rolled out in batches, the firm plans to complete the full rollout by the end of this year.

Hitting on this capability, Sampad Swain, Founder and CEO, Instamojo, tells us more,

UPI allows smaller merchants to have one Instamojo.com account, which performs all their payments including UPI and basically manages and grows their business from one dashboard. Now, a merchant can just send a link to customers through various modes like Whatsapp, SMS or e-mail, and the customer can make the payment through his/her mobile banking app which supports UPI.

However, according to Sampad, UPI cannot be a standalone solution, since merchants would be required to accommodate other modes of payments as well as have e-commerce enabling tools like management, reconciliation and even an online store, which Instamojo aims to provide as a supporting ecosystem.

For all these services, the firm charges a transparent fee of 2 percent + Rs 3 for every successful transaction, and 5 percent+ Rs 3 for selling digital goods.

Aiming to grow 15-20 percent month on month, the firm plans to onboard 1.5 million merchants by the end of this fiscal year. Presently having more than 5,000 stores on its platform, 65 percent of its sellers are from non-metro cities.

However, only 40 percent of its audience are mobile shoppers, but Sampad believes that this number will grow with the introduction of UPI, which has a mobile-first architecture.

Furthermore, it is estimated that mobile payments will grow with further adoption of UPI, enabling more merchants to come online.

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