Zaakpay, one of the two digital payment gateway companies backed by Sequoia Capital India, has launched Mpay, a mobile payment solution, reports Techcircle, adding that it was launched in beta a couple of months ago. Note that we haven’t been able to find any information on Mpay on the web, even on Zaakpay’s website: However, Upasana Taku, founder of Zaakpay tells MediaNama that they have processed Rs 10 crore via mobile in the last two and a half months. Taku says that they’ve been operating in stealth mode, and are now going to look to promote it to potential clients. “On mobile, many merchants only offer Cash on Delivery, and there’s a need for it among ecommerce companies in particular. Ecommerce companies are seeing around 5-10% of their traffic via mobile, and so now mcommerce is becoming important for them. Android is becoming a big theme, and we’ve been working on simplifying mobile payments,” she said.
Zaakpay has created in-app payment solutions for Android and iOS, where the user experience is controlled: for the second factor of authentication, as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India, Zaakpay opens the banks 3D secure paymetns page inside the app itself. They’ve also looked at what existed in terms of mobile browser solutions, says Taku, because each browser renders the page differently, and created solutions for rendering the page better on Opera and UC Browser; these earlier had a success rate of 10-20%.
Screenshots:
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But why wouldn’t someone just use Google Wallet or the Apple payment solution for making in-app purchases? Taku says that Google wallet doesn’t have enough payment solutions in India, and it only works for International customers. Indian users use netbanking and debit cards, and an international wallet cannot offer that. Currently both Apple and Google allow external payment methods (Mpay is one of them), and there are other solutions in the market being deployed by Indian companies.
Zaakpay is backed by Sequoia Capital India – it raised $1 million from the fund. Last year, Sequoia Capital India also backed another payment gateway company, Citrus Payments. Other payment gateway companies in India include CCAvenue, PayU, EBS, BillDesk, Paytm Payments, among others.
Another interesting solution for authenticating payments is that from Netcore, which authenticates using a missed call.
Our Take
A much needed initiative, although changes from either Google, Apple or even the RBI, if it mandates only OTP as an authentication factor on mobile devices, would make things tricky. Payments is a tightly controlled regulatory environment, and in the Techcircle story, Taku mentions that Zaakpay’s Bankpay solution, which was meant to help customers make payments via their bank account, was eventually shuttered because it didn’t receive the approvals from “the authorities.
What would be particularly useful here would be an integration of telecom operator billing, as well as an integration with prepaid wallets. Zaakpay’s sister concern, MobiKwik, has as an online wallet, but closed wallets – like in case of Flipkart, which had to disallow payments to sellers – cannot be used to make payments directly to third party vendors. For this, Zaakpay, or for that matter Mobikwik, will have to apply for a prepaid payments license, or integrate multiple third party prepaid payment companies like Itz Cash, Beam and Airtel Money, and others have.
Disclosure: PayU and CCAvenue are advertisers with MediaNama
