With Incedo’s implementation, Trupay has removed all intermediaries, which as a result reduces transaction charges, and the smartphone itself works like a PoS device so no additional hardware cost or maintenance cost – which works well from a merchant’s perspective
Internet banking and, after that mobile wallets, has done wonders for India’s digital payments economy, especially after recent demonitisation in India. however much of this is not inter-operable, so what is being created was a series of silos—banks put restrictions on their customers loading cash on to other wallets, many taxi aggregators accept digital payments only through their wallets and transferring money from one wallet to another is next to impossible.
Just as it changed the card business with its RuPay, the state-owned National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has come up with a revolutionary payments concept that is both interoperable and is fully mobile called the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). A milestone was reached with the launch of Unified Payment Interface (UPI). Simply put, it eases the process of money transfer through the ubiquitous mobile phone, bringing this technology within the reach of everybody. Making payments through phones is not new, but easing up the process to the extent where it seems as simple as sending a text message is important.
A FinTech startup decided to use this as an opportunity to make transactions easier for users. Payments app – Trupay aims to transform the entire payments ecosystem by avoiding all intermediate layers, allowing the user to pay anyone on its contact list directly from one’s bank account instantly. It securely transforms one’s bank account into a pay-on_the-go solution, which enables customers to make transactions with just their phone number.
No Wallet layer in Cashless Payments
Earlier, TruPay used an IMPS solution using Mobile Money Identifier (MMID). They wanted to roll out a new payment solution and develop a new way of doing cashless financial transactions by using the recently introduced Unified Payment Interface (UPI) while using a mobile wallet; an end user has to pre-load money into the account with the mobile wallet service provider. TruPay wanted to remove the wallet layer to create a direct transaction for users.
Trupay is stoked about revolutionizing the current Indian payments scenario by offering a hassle-free, secure and seamless payment experience to everyone. Incedo Inc developed a platform for Trupay and enables them to offer one-touch pay on the go and the facility to pay anyone anytime directly through your bank account. There’s no need to carry credit or debit cards to pay and unlike e-wallets and it doesn’t even need cumbersome top-ups. Trupay aims to become most secure bank-agnostic platform, which leverages the finest features of existing Indian bank-transfer setup.
In case of cards, there is an issue of high transaction charges (varies from 2-3%), along with the cost of hardware charges for PoS machines in case of offline transactions. Secondly, there is a long settlement period. This happens because of the number of intermediaries in a transaction – starting from payment gateway like bill desk to payment processor like visa/master-card on the merchant’s side. From a consumer’s perspective, the number of inputs/pages/clicks it requires is far too many, adding to the complexity in this whole cycle.
Cash has its own issues starting from cash handling cost to cash frauds and theft, apart from ATM visits- its a bigger issue after the recent demonetisation. It’s the same case with top up of virtual wallet as consumers do not want to block a high amount of money which will fetch no interest.
With Incedo’s implementation, Trupay has removed all intermediaries. This has addressed two big pain points. It reduces transaction charges as the settlement is immediate into merchant’s account. Secondly, the smartphone itself works like a PoS device so no additional hardware cost or maintenance cost – which works well from a merchant’s perspective.
For a consumer, the process of payment is so simple that merchant enters the consumer’s phone number and asks for invoice amount at the press of a button. The consumer gets a notification with one click and the payment gets done.
IMPS and UPI are relatively new concepts in India. Considering that UPI was developed and launched by the RBI only in April 2016, the main challenge for the technology provider was to develop a solution from scratch. MMID didn’t exist until 2014 and barely anyone made transactions using it. The solution required deep cross-functional domain knowledge of the payment process and banking system functioning, along with technical knowledge of developing high-transaction cloud platforms and user-friendly mobility front-ends.
Besides developing a technology, Incedo had to ensure that transaction over Trupay’s solution were secure and would cost lesser than card payments.
One step closer to Cashless Economy
Incedo covered a full-spectrum of services including design, development, testing and support activities. It served as a single-stop and provided expertise covering all aspects of customer requirement and engineering expertise in delivering solution as per the timeline.
After the team did its research on MMID based transaction and RBI guidelines, they linked bank account and made merchant integrations with provisions for users to ‘request’ payments. Incedo accommodated bill payment for mobile and DTH and authorized the solution for instant transfer- which helps ecommerce merchants give an option of UPI payments instead of cash on delivery. Keeping in mind that a user interface can make or break an application, a simple, minimal interface was designed.
The Aftermath
As a result, Incedo developed an easy-to-use solution which took into account bank and merchant integration, support for technical queries and mission critical apps and real-time ticketing. Incedo is currently the first point of contact for all technical queries for banks and merchant integrations. It provides 24/7 support to mission critical applications.
“ The payment is effected in real time, with costs lower than those incurred in card payments. The product is now live in the market. The app is also being trialed as a small merchant POS device,” comments Rahul Gochhwal, director of Trupay.
Money exchange services
“In the future, the platform solution will be integrated to create on demand money exchange services for tourists or business travellers,’’ comments Narender Kumar, founding partner of Trupay. Eventually, UPI will eliminate the need for maintaining a mobile wallet as MMID is not limited only to individuals. This is a significant step towards moving into a cashless economy.
