Razorpay, an online payments platform, announced today that it is waiving off all service charges on Debit Card transactions for all of its 10,000+ merchants, from 12 PM on Nov 24 till December 31, 2016. This move is aimed at helping businesses affected by demonetization and encourage users to transact online. While some banks are still deciding upon the waiver proposed by RBI, Razorpay has taken initiative and is the first payment gateway to remove all charges for debit cards.
Debit cards are the most popular mode of online payments. In July 2016, a total of 25.94 million credit cards and 697.22 million debit cards were in operation, according to the Reserve Bank of India. In July 2016, total number of transactions through credit cards were 79.44 million while the figure for debit cards was 129.07 million. The number of transactions for debit cards rose by 36% whereas growth in credit card transactions was just 22.6% for the year ending July 2016. Now, with 0% transaction fee on receiving payments with debit cards, businesses will have additional incentive to encourage their customers to go cashless.
“Though we have not received confirmation regarding the waiver from all our partner banks, we have decided to launch zero transaction cost for debit cards across all our merchants. We acknowledge and support the effort by RBI to promote online transactions. This move fits in perfectly well in the long term vision of a Digital India and will incentivize merchants to go cashless,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO & Co-Founder, Razorpay.
Last week, Razorpay launched Razorpay POS app for brick and mortar businesses and eCOD payments. The mobile based seller POS App which is already available on Android Play Store allows businesses to accept digital payments in physical world. The end user can now chose to pay through variety of non-cash modes like credit/debit card, net banking, UPI or digital wallets like OlaMoney, Mobikwik, PayUmoney and Freecharge, while transacting offline at stores.
Amuleek Singh, CEO & Founder at Chai Point commented – “At Chai Point, we have always pushed for smart use cases of using online transactions in our offline stores as well. As the average purchase size is smaller for us, debit cards account for a large chunk of our business and with this push we expect them to grow even further. This swift initiative from Razorpay will ensure greater penetration of digital transactions across all our stores.”
Razorpay is the second company from India to be selected by the world’s most prestigious startup accelerator Y Combinator, with over 10,000 merchants including the likes of Nykaa, Papa John’s, Runnr, Chai Point, Nestaway, Eatfresh, among others.