BENGALURU: Digital payments have started replacing cash payments to some extent, but the digital payment ecosystem is not entirely flawless. For instance, there is no guarantee that the shopkeeper will accept payment through the mobile wallet or credit card that you use. For mobile wallets, the merchant needs to have the same wallet as you have, to be able to accept payment through it. Bengaluru-based start-up fonePaisa looks to end these payment woes.
fonePaisa is an interoperable payments solution based on technology innovation empowering individuals to go both cashless and cardless. “Swiping and dipping cards at stores need hardware along with the cost of the EDC machine which are prone to depreciation and rentals can go up to `800 a month. Then you are forced to open accounts with the bank you have the EDC with,” said Ritesh Agarwal, CEO fonePaisa.
“We are giving merchants the options to enjoy products from all banks by being their extended sales partners. Banks have also understood that and we have partnered with IndusInd Bank. The consumer doesn’t have any headache of keeping innumerable number of wallets on his phone and the merchant doesn’t need to scratch his head about machines which work on a call basis and difficult to latch on a wi-fi.
We are helping merchants reduce his capital expenditure on devices and we want them to forget the colour of money. With fonePaisa, they only need to worry about the money that comes to them rather than where it is coming from,” says Ritesh.
fonePaisa is a closed loop wallet because it does not hold any currency which will integrate all consumer facing merchants (B2C) to accept payments from any pre-paid instruments in the country. So the fonePaisa technology and app becomes the single payment platform.
The start-up has been founded by Sharad Hegde, C S Prasad and Ritesh Agarwal. Sharad was the first employee of Infosys in 1981 and Prasad was heading Finacle’s (Infosys’ most successful software product) engineering and product units. Ritesh was an ex-banker who sold technology to banks.
fonePaisa has been invited by the Reserve Bank of India’s Department of Co-operative Bank Supervision to help smaller banks. “Banks may have organic and inorganic strategy, but it costs to set up a branch and a sales team. By partnering with us they can save a lot of time and resources since we have all the
payments options available under the sun. We want to manage the payments field and we want merchants to worry about their work,” says Ritesh. He believes that in an aggregating world, the game in payments is only about the power of aggregation. fonePaisa also has a B2B line of product which is helping
companies solve their problem of invoices.
The first merchant on this B2B platform was an organic milk vendor called Vanam in Bengaluru. He receives an excel sheet at the end of each month where his customers mobile numbers are listed.