RazorPay now accepts payments through UPI

RazorPay has announced that it has started accepting UPI payments on its platform. With this introduction, customers of merchants having Razorpay would be able to make online payments through UPI, in addition to internet banking, virtual wallets, credit card and debit card.

“This will be the first large-scale roll-out on the merchant side and does not require the addition of any code to start offering UPI payment options to their customers. All of Razorpay’s merchants will have access to receiving payments via UPI starting today,” said the company in a statement.

UPI or Unified Payments Interface is a new payment mode launched by National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) with the support of RBI. The key difference between UPI and other payment modes is that it’s mobile first and uses MPIN for second-factor authentication. UPI allows a customer with a bank account to transfer money and make payments on a real-time basis that is available 24x7.

“Anyone with a mobile phone and a bank account will be able to benefit from UPI for transacting money online. This is a major change for online commerce as UPI will allow merchants reduce transaction costs and create a faster checkout experience,” said Harshil Mathur, chief executive officer and co-founder, Razorpay.

The UPI system will need just one virtual ID called virtual payment address (VPA), similar to an email address, for authentication without disclosing the user’s bank account details.

Razorpay, founded in 2014 by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, is backed by MasterCard, Tiger Global Management and Matrix Partners. It provides payment solutions for over 10,000 merchants such as Videocon, Nykaa, Zerodha, NestAway, Udacity and Chai Point, among others.

Earlier in August, mobile payments start-up PhonePe Internet Pvt. Ltd, owned by Flipkart, had announced to launch its app based on the UPI platform.