Exclusive | Betting big on India: PayU's Nitin Gupta

The first decade of this millennium has been a watershed period with internet penetration reaching a 150 million users mark and a mobile revolution resulting in over 700 million connections. This has spurred rapid expansion of e commerce and penetration of plastic in millions of wallets across the country throwing open a vast market for online payments in India. The acceptance infrastructure has also improved considerably over the last 5 years with more than 270 million debit card & 18 million credit card users.

Speaking to Adgully, Nitin Gupta Country Head, PayU India Internet Pvt Ltd says, “The potential market size of online payment industry is around $ 150 billion in the next 5 years. Currently the penetration is roughly at a tenth with travel accounting for about $ 8 billion, financial services being $ 1 Billion, e-commerce half a billion and the remaining big pie constituting for utility and bill payments.”

Buoyed by Indian prospects, PayU India, the flagship company of the Naspers Group, a $ 25 billion media and internet company listed on the Johannesburg and London Stock Exchanges set up shop in the country in October 2011 for E-commerce merchants in India. Within a year it has grown into a leading consumer payment processor in the online payment space, serving more than 1160 merchants. Explaining reasons behind its success, Gupta says, “our unique value propositions, like ability to improve conversion rates of any merchant by 8-12 percent, detailed analytics into customer behavior, a one-click checkout experience, and amazing customer service, has helped us achieve this feat in a short time span.”

PayU provides payment options though credit cards (Visa/Mastercard /Diners), debit cards of all banks including Mastero, net banking of 29 banks including major PSUs, EMI and cash card & wallets. Currently it operates from three offices in Gurgaon (HQ), Mumbai and Bangalore, its team is close to 100 people.

Shedding light on its Indian operations Gupta adds, “Today, roughly 10,000 merchants actively accept online payments and PayU serves more than 1160 of them. The broad categories that we serve are e-commerce vendors, travel sector, financial services and utility bodies. Our clientele includes popular online businesses like GoIbibo, Jabong, Ferns n Petals, Rechargeitnow, Travelyaari etc. PayU India has the highest customer acquisition rate so far in the online payments space with us adding more than 150 merchants per month.”

Despite the presence of players like CC Avenues and Bill Desk who are well established and have been around for 7-8 years, PayU is confident about its growth prospects. It expects a huge traction in the online payments space in the next couple of years as more and more casual sellers join the bandwagon. Studies indicate that private consumption is bound to rise by leaps & bounds and this will generate the need for new markets & payment methods. The merchant community is expected to hit one million mark by 2015. With government of India mandating utility bodies to collect bills online, a major chunk of online payment share is expected from this category.

Speaking about the reasons why consumers don’t use online payment systems or are wary of using is Gupta says, “today the end customers distrust giving or writing their card/account details as there is continuous worry of details getting compromised.” PayU India has taken stern steps to fight fraud and solve the problems arising due to it. “We recently tied up with Retail Decisions, a world leader in online fraud prevention, to provide increased protection to Indian merchants in case of international transactions.  We are the first payment aggregator to introduce device finger printing in India. It combats with fraud even if a password has been compromised. Moreover this solution is available at a price which is a fraction of any such solution currently available globally,” he adds.

PayU has also recently launched a path breaking feature called 1-click checkout to make payments super fast and super smooth. This feature requires the customer to store card details in order to make repetitive purchase fast. Storing card details is again an alien concept for the skeptical Indian consumers. However PayU has developed a smart security solution which uses a hardware to store card details in an encrypted format using a key management system. This hardware based security product is the most robust security solution available commercially. “This ultra security features provided by us, has helped in allaying the customer fears and eventually enhanced the customer loyalty for the merchants,” says Gupta. 

Further offering a word of advice, Gupta says, “The essential points that users should be aware of are - The URL should be authentic, try to use your own device for making payments, in case if one is using a 3rd party device or the antivirus on your machine is not updated, make use of virtual keyboard to enter passwords.”

PayU India’s long-term vision is to take the payment system to another level by not only providing cutting edge technology solutions to its customers but creating more channels for better transactions and helping the stake holders in the eco-system to revolutionize the way payments happen. Concludes Gupta, “our objective is to increase the number of entities which accept payments online in India at one end and at the other end increase the number of buyers who buy online. The target is to achieve one million sellers and 20 million buyers.” 

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