Ecommerce heavyweights Amazon and Flipkart have resumed cash-on-delivery (COD) for orders. Flipkart had suspended COD for orders above Rs 2000 and now has resumed it fully up to any amount. Meanwhile, Amazon had suspended COD on all orders and resumed them since November 11. However, Amazon also said that customers could pay at their doorstep with debit cards or valid currency notes. It added that its delivery agents have been trained to help customers who opted for card payments. Amazon is also running an offer on Amazon gift cards where customers can load the balance and get an incentive of 15% or Rs 300.
Flipkart, on the other hand, reached out to its customers whose orders were in transit to educate them and offer additional time to procure cash. The company said that it has seen an uptick towards electronic transactions and has been introducing wallet cashbacks. Note that Flipkart-owned mobile payments company PhonePe will now be handling all cashbacks and refunds. PhonePe said that it will be looking to replace cash-on-delivery with UPI payments for Flipkart, Myntra and newly acquired Jabong.
Also read: our demonetization liveblog
Wallet-on-delivery: Wallet companies have been cashing in on the demonetization and Paytm, MobiKwik and FreeCharge have started offering wallet-on-deliver as an option for their merchants. FreeCharge will allow wallet payments for orders from Snapdeal. FreeCharge’s Wallet on Delivery started on November 10 and in a progressive roll-out, and will cover Snapdeal and FreeChargeusers across the country over the next few weeks.
Other payment options for merchants: PayU said that it is launching an aggressive campaign for their seller app and the Sellfie app. The company says merchants can download the the PayUmoney seller app and onboard them in two minutes to accept online payments. They can then create bills and send the link to consumers via Whatsapp, Email, SMS or other apps. The consumers, in return can use the link to pay via credit or debit card and net-banking.
FreeCharge has also removed the initial set-up charges and also the commission charged to merchants on each transaction. CEO Govind Rajan mentioned that the company has been signing up a merchant every 30 seconds following the move and demonetization. MobiKwik and Paytm have launched a 24X7 user support number that is operational to help onboarding of merchants and users. Paytm now has over 850,000 offline merchants across India who accept Paytm as a payment method.
