Earlier this week, CCAvenue* did a reboot from being a vanilla payment gateway to a service suite offering a Do-It-Yourself Webstore, with analytics and marketing solution, reputation monitoring and 1-click checkout among other features. The company's CMO Mohan Nair spoke to MediaNama about this shift and said that the payment gateway marketplace is too crowded now, with every new player trying to elbow each other out for the same merchants instead of concentrating on the fast growing e-commerce space. Nair accused many "desperate VC-funded companies" and "newbies" of dropping rates in a cut throat manner to show results. He also said that CCAvenue has no plans to launch a wallet as they want to remain merchant neutral. He added that the company is a "customer convenience" platform, while others are doing it as a "customer acquisition" platform. Click on the links below for more details - New business strategy - Logic behind the shift - How have volumes changed - Why offer 27 currencies? - What about the exchange rate? - Importance of dispute resolution - Won't do wallets - Monetisation - On margins - Being merchant neutral - Crowded marketplace New business strategy: Neither has it remained a pure-play vanilla payment gateway nor has it become a full scale solutions provider to the level that other companies have evolved to be. I would say that the market is evolving at a rapid pace and demand from merchants on market enhancing features, both in the terms of new product offering and technology robustness, is on the rise. Market has evolved, aspirations from merchants are also evolving, competition…
