Aim is to become Southeast Asia’s largest player in next four years: Razorpay
With the Curlec acquisition, Razorpay is looking to expand its core payments services to markets including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, etc.
- Oct 19, 2022,
- Updated Oct 19, 2022 2:27 PM IST
One of India’s largest payments and banking platforms Razorpay is eyeing to expand in the Southeast Asian (SEA) market after acquiring a majority stake in Malaysian fintech firm Curlec earlier this year. The financial services unicorn said that in India’s internet e-commerce space it has a 30-40 per cent market share since the platform has built a strong scalable payments platform in the region. “A lot of these payment platforms can be leveraged in lot of other geographical regions. While payment systems and payment flows are different in different countries but underlying infrastructure and capabilities of onboarding a merchant, doing settlements, doing reconciliation, etc. can be leveraged in the SEA market and the intent is to be the largest player there in next 3-4 years,” Rahul Kothari, Chief Business Officer, Razorpay told Business Today.
With the Curlec acquisition, Razorpay is looking to expand its core payments services to markets including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, etc.
Earlier this year, Razorpay also acquired payments platform Ezetap which will help the company expand into the offline market. Ezetap—that competes with companies like Pine Labs and Mswipe—accepts all physical payment modes like cards, mobile wallets, biometric-based, QR code-based, payments via messaging apps, etc.
Kothari adds that competition now is now "fairly aggressive" in the payments space. “The market is big enough and growing very fast. Competition is not something that I keep thinking about. The key is to understand what are some of the primary customer behaviour changes in the payments space are that we can leverage,” he said.
He adds that the company’s DNA is going to be small and medium enterprise (SME)-focused. “Primarily there are 2-3 things that work for SMEs when they work with us. One is of course our largest business which is the payments business is finely attuned to the requirements of the SME industry. For example, typically an SME would not have the tech resources to create a full-fledged website and for that we have a very strong offerings targeted to SMEs like payment links, payment pages, route which enable pay in and pay out facility for an SME,” he said.
Another thing, he said, is that a lot of SMEs are looking to go beyond their business in India. “They want to have customers who are based outside India as well. For them, we have a very strong cross-border business for which we enable how these merchants can accept payments outside India and help them go global,” he adds.
He said that Razorpay has close to 8 million merchants who are primarily SMEs and this number is expected to reach 9-10 million as the industry matures.
Also read: Why Razorpay is focusing on the offline payments market in India
One of India’s largest payments and banking platforms Razorpay is eyeing to expand in the Southeast Asian (SEA) market after acquiring a majority stake in Malaysian fintech firm Curlec earlier this year. The financial services unicorn said that in India’s internet e-commerce space it has a 30-40 per cent market share since the platform has built a strong scalable payments platform in the region. “A lot of these payment platforms can be leveraged in lot of other geographical regions. While payment systems and payment flows are different in different countries but underlying infrastructure and capabilities of onboarding a merchant, doing settlements, doing reconciliation, etc. can be leveraged in the SEA market and the intent is to be the largest player there in next 3-4 years,” Rahul Kothari, Chief Business Officer, Razorpay told Business Today.
With the Curlec acquisition, Razorpay is looking to expand its core payments services to markets including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, etc.
Earlier this year, Razorpay also acquired payments platform Ezetap which will help the company expand into the offline market. Ezetap—that competes with companies like Pine Labs and Mswipe—accepts all physical payment modes like cards, mobile wallets, biometric-based, QR code-based, payments via messaging apps, etc.
Kothari adds that competition now is now "fairly aggressive" in the payments space. “The market is big enough and growing very fast. Competition is not something that I keep thinking about. The key is to understand what are some of the primary customer behaviour changes in the payments space are that we can leverage,” he said.
He adds that the company’s DNA is going to be small and medium enterprise (SME)-focused. “Primarily there are 2-3 things that work for SMEs when they work with us. One is of course our largest business which is the payments business is finely attuned to the requirements of the SME industry. For example, typically an SME would not have the tech resources to create a full-fledged website and for that we have a very strong offerings targeted to SMEs like payment links, payment pages, route which enable pay in and pay out facility for an SME,” he said.
Another thing, he said, is that a lot of SMEs are looking to go beyond their business in India. “They want to have customers who are based outside India as well. For them, we have a very strong cross-border business for which we enable how these merchants can accept payments outside India and help them go global,” he adds.
He said that Razorpay has close to 8 million merchants who are primarily SMEs and this number is expected to reach 9-10 million as the industry matures.
Also read: Why Razorpay is focusing on the offline payments market in India