Payments company Razorpay has partnered with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to help customers book train and flight tickets through UPI, in addition to other payment modes like net banking, wallets and credit/debit cards.
The Economic Times reported that through this partnership, Razorpay expects to process more than a million transactions a month on IRCTC website and mobile app.
Founded in 2014 by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, Razorpay is an online payment gateway which allows Indian businesses to collect payments online through credit card, debit card, net banking and wallets like JioMoney, Mobikwik, PayUmoney, Airtel Money, FreeCharge, Ola Money and PayZapp.
The company claims that it has clocked a growth of 40-50% month-on-month in one year and said that it expects 10x growth in volume & revenue by the next fiscal year. In terms of users, the company expects to have 500 million end consumers by 2020. It said in its blog that the company is seeing growth from conventionally cash-heavy industries, like logistics, travel, consumer electronics, financial services and education etc.
Razorpay funding
In January, Razorpay had raised Series B funding of $20 million led by its existing investors Tiger Global and Y Combinator, along with participation from Matrix Partners. At that time, the company had said it will use the funds to expand its reach into new markets and verticals.
Before that in July 2016, Mastercard made an undisclosed investment in the company. As a part of the investment, Razorpay said it would expand internationally to countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and UAE, and MasterCard will be helping the company with partnerships with local banks. Prior to that, it had raised Series A funding worth $9 million led by Tiger Global and participation from Matrix Partners, in 2015. At the same time, it had secured seed funding of $2.5 million from 33 investors including Y Combinator, Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal founders), Punit Soni (ex-Flipkart CPO), Amit Gupta & Naveen Tewari (Inmobi founders), Kunal Shah & Sandeep Tandon (Freecharge founders).
The competition
In October 2017, MobiKwik’s payment gateway, Zaakpay, partnered with IRCTC’s Rail connect app. The MobiKwik deal allowed users pay through channels like debit card, credit card, net banking, ATM cards, and mobile wallets. But it did not include UPI as a payment option. This was despite Zaakpay having allowed UPI payments through a separate partnership with ICICI Bank.
Paytm and PayU also integrated its payment gateway with IRCTC back in September 2016. Previously, IRCTC had to have individual tie-ups with banks.
