Razorpay acquires Mumbai-based digital invoicing startup BillMe

Fintech unicorn Razorpay has acquired Billme, a Mumbai-based digital invoicing and customer engagement startup, to enhance its offline payments product suite. 

The Tiger Global-backed payment and banking solution provider marked its entry into offline payments last year July, with the acquisition of PoS (Point of Sale) device maker Ezetap for $200 million. It now offers three variables in devices—Android Smart PoS, Android Smart Mini PoS, and a mobile device.

The integration with BillMe’s technology will allow Razorpay’s device users/offline merchants to generate digital invoices, replacing paper bills.

Businesses will be able to go live with digital invoicing in under 10 minutes as opposed to month-long processes, and with minimal tech involvement from the merchant’s end. 

In a statement, the company said Razorpay-generated digital bills (powered by BillMe) will enable merchants to engage better with their customers as they would be able to undertake feedback and surveys via these digital bills. In addition, the stack comes with a dashboard that would allow merchants to analyse customer behaviour and establish custom campaigns along with cross-sales.

Razorpay MD and Co-founder Shashank Kumar terms the global digital receipts market as a $2.3 billion opportunity by 2027.

“We aim to anchor this opportunity for businesses and help them stand out by engaging and retaining their customers better while strengthening their marketing capabilities. Through such digital bills, their associated dashboards, and analytics behind them, we plan to scale up a simple bill into a multidimensional tool for merchants to understand, engage, and target their customers much more effectively,” Kumar said.  

For customers, digital bills allow faster checkouts, save paper, and resolve the problem of misplacement of physical bills for future reference. 

BillMe, a six-year-old startup founded by Jai Hemrajani, Kuber Pritmani, and Rupam Jain, has provided its technology to more than 4,000 businesses, managing over 15,000 retail PoS for firms like McDonald’s, Burger King, Decathlon, Baggit, Relaxo Footwear, and Cinepolis among others.

"We have established ourselves as the trusted partner for retailers in all things related to digital invoicing and post-purchase customer engagement. Through tech innovations, we have enhanced customer experience and provided retailers with valuable data insights to cement BillMe as the pioneer in this industry," Pritmani said.

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Company status, offline race

This marks Razorpay’s eighth acquisition, and only second to solidify its omnichannel strategy to expand into offline payments after Ezetap. The development also comes amid its restriction by RBI to onboard merchants for online gateway business.

Of the total seven previous buyouts, four deals took place in 2022 alone. This includes the Malaysian-based recurring payments firm Curlec; Izealiant, a Pune-based banking technology company; the PoS payments solution provider Ezetap; and PoshVine, a loyalty and rewards management company.  

Offline payments are the new goldmine for online payment firms as they look to diversify their revenue stream and tap India's large offline merchant base either via PoS terminals or soundboxes, alongside other value adds.

All companies, whose core business revolves around gateways, are trying to become omnichannel players by offering both online and offline payments.

Pine Labs and Mswipe, which started out as terminal providers, have launched their respective online gateways. Payments app PhonePe has dolled out both payment gateway and PoS devices, enabling merchants to accept payments via debit cards, credit cards, and UPI. 

Razorpay, which is yet to come out with its FY23 results, recorded an 18% higher profit of Rs 7.3 crore in FY22. It is yet to post profits on a consolidated basis.  

The total revenue for the fiscal jumped 75% to Rs 1,485.7 crore from Rs 844.6 crore in FY21. 

Backed by Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, GIC, Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital, and TCV, the fintech firm was valued at around $7.5 billion in its last funding round in December 2021.