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Cashless in India

Tag: India

Cashless in India

Cashless in India

Sleepless in Seattle: Remember the Hollywood movie from the 90s starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. As it turns out, it was not a very happy story, as the protagonist grieves his wife’s death and he cannot sleep after moving base from Chicago to Seattle.

On the contrary, given the Digital India revolution and the growing adoption of multiple forms of digital payments in India, it is definitely a good time to be Cashless in India.  The current revolution of digital payments stretches much beyond being only as a result of demonetization. The consumer’s adoption rate couple with the government’s push in creating a cashless economy has been unprecedented.

Despite all the hoopla around digital payments and going cashless, India still remains low in banking penetration and cash has been the de-facto transaction medium for most in the country. Hence the scale of the revolution is yet to realize its full potential.  The government’s continued push towards digitization through BHIM, UPI and Payments Banks has really scaled the digital payments landscape in India.  It’s all about financial inclusion through digitization. Needless to say, there’s a lot of ground to be covered, given India’s population but the growth trend puts the country on track to achieve its digital payments ambitions.

You must be wondering that if there’s so much action happening in the domestic digital payments space in India, what about international digital payments? Well, the scope on the international payments space is exciting as well from an Indian perspective. India is one of the fastest growing markets for cross border payments, recording an estimated volume of $260 bn+ in exports and $400 bn+ in imports*.

We at PayTabs provide you with a seamless payments solution that helps you accept payments in multiple currencies and the amount gets credited to your account in INR. Sign up for a free demo to experience the power and flexibility of our solution.

*Data Source: Economic Times

Indian Marketplaces: Shift from Offline to Online

Indian Marketplaces: Shift from Offline to Online

Circa 2006: You live in Greater Kailash in New Delhi, surrounded by markets, where you would get everything under the sun. One fine morning, your phone fell down on the floor and the screen cracked. You run to the nearest store and buy the phone of your choice.

Circa 2017: Similar incident happens; you login to Amzon/Flipkart and order the phone of your choice. You need not have to be in GK Market, New Delhi. You can be holidaying in Pondicherry or Himachal Pradesh.

What has changed in the past 11 years? Apart from the fact that there have been two national elections in the world’s largest democracy and India winning the Cricket World Cup in 2011, the buzzword amongst Indian consumers have been: E-Commerce, which has grown leaps and bounds aided by significant increase in internet penetration. The result has been massive volumes and massive total amount of transactions done on e-commerce sites, which has been a key driver to domestic consumption in recent years, catapulting India to the fastest growing economy in the world.  No wonder, the Indian e-commerce market is projected to grow to $100 bn+ by 2020.

payment gateway in india

In the past one year, there has been a significant increase in online transactions aided by the onslaught of non-cash payment methods, as a result of the government’s demonetization drive, which has led of increased adoption of digital transactions, not only for shopping on marketplaces, but for day to day purchases as well.

Yet, despite the Digital India initiative and the Demonetization drive, there still remains a significant amount of population who rely on offline commerce, especially in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. This is primarily due to the trust factor associated with an offline transaction, because the buyer and the seller meet face to face.

The Indian e-commerce story is tremendous because it has managed to club convenience of shopping online with trust. It is a paradigm shift in the behaviour in the Indian consumer. In smaller cities, e-commerce hasn’t seen huge growth as compared to metropolitan areas, but that will soon change in the coming years as e-commerce penetrates into smaller cities.

A smaller but an important element of the Indian e-commerce story, is the aspect of export of goods and services. From ages, Indian exporters have been selling goods abroad and in recent years, Indian professionals and agencies have been selling services abroad. Indian small and medium scale businesses constitute a large portion of commerce and exports. This segment of the market deserves to take advantage of the digital revolution and harness the power of e-commerce and online payments.

Learn more about how PayTabs can help grow your business online and accept international payments in a seamless, safe and secure way. Sign up for a free demo now.

6 Factors Driving Indian E-Commerce

6 Factors Driving Indian E-Commerce

The Indian E-commerce scene has exploded in recent times, with many different segments being created by niche players, with the most nascent being Foodtech. India has come a long way with respect to e-commerce and the evolution has been really rapid, befitting the world’s fastest growing large economy.

The growth of e-commerce is tremendous in Indian context, considering that traditionally India has been a cash oriented economy with offline retail stores driving purchases by the consumer. Currently, India adds 6 million new consumers* to the e-commerce industry, every month. This scale of growth is unprecedented in any other market and goes to show the potential of the Indian e-commerce market.

The following key drivers of Indian e-commerce are almost unique to India, as some of these points are intrinsic to Indian consumer behavior:

  • Convenience & Trust: It took some time for e-commerce players to gain the trust of the consumer and shed the initial belief that products available at some of the largest online marketplaces were used products. This is because for a long time, the Indian e-commerce space was dominated by e-bay which used to sell used products in India, operating in a marketplace environment. However, as prominent players entered the market backed by a solid supply chain and great marketing & communications, the quintessential Indian consumer realized the convenience of e-commerce and developed a trust with the portal.

 

  • Price: A typical Indian buyer is very price conscious and bargains heavily. They are always looking out for deals. This perception is widely regarded as being true. Price has always been the trump card for Indian e-commerce players as most of the products that are available online are cheaper than the same products available offline.

 

  • Payment Options: With the advent of digital wallets and UPI (Unified Payments Interface), the payment options have grown over the years. Earlier on, most e-commerce players grew because of the success of the Cash on Delivery (COD) model, which was rather prevalent in India, due to a large amount of Cash being circulated in the economy. It is only in recent times, due to the demonetization drive, Indians have jumped on to the electronic payments bandwagon.

 

  • Digital India: The government of India’s Digital India initiative has been a key factor in enhancing internet penetration across the country, which has led to a whole host of services being digitally delivered. The invariable result of increase in internet penetration has been the fact that apart from accessing essential services digitally, the consumer has taken to online shopping and online payments, big time.

 

  • Domestic Consumption: Any world renowned economist will tell you that the India growth story has been driven by domestic demand and the high consumption of the ever aspirational Indian consumer. The obvious macroeconomic scenario had to play out in the e-commerce space as well.

 

  • Language: Most e-commerce portals in India are in English and that has played a big role in the growth of the industry, as India has the largest English speaking middle class population. Moreover, the regional language versions of popular sites have nonetheless played a critical role in the growth of large scale e-commerce portals.

Despite the growth of Indian e-commerce, much remains to be tapped in terms of SMEs (Small & Medium Enterprises) hopping onto the online space and selling internationally, as in exporters. PayTabs can help you make the online shift and help your business go global. Now, it is easy to receive online global payments. Explore now and Sign up for a free demo!

*Data Source: Wikipedia

Evolution of The Indian Consumer

Evolution of The Indian Consumer

In one of our previous post, we touched upon the fact that Indian e-commerce has grown tremendously in recent years and digital payments form the core of the Digital India ecosystem. The growth in payments has been driven by the push for online payments at the institutional level, be it government, corporate or banks.

Having said that, the paradigm shift from offline to online has been driven by the Indian Consumer, who has accepted the digital medium. Specifically, in the space of digital payments, the consumer has been forced to reduce his dependency on cash, given the government’s huge demonetization drive last November. Therefore, it would be fair to say that some of the digital adoption in the Indian context has been due to demonetization, especially in the payments space.

Until a year ago, the penetration of Digital Payments in India was rather low. However, owing to the government’s efforts, there has been an explosion in the digital payments space in India. Post demonetization, the number of debit card transactions swore to 1 Billion*. Well, most of these transactions have been PoS(Point of Sale) transactions in physical stores. But a significant number of those transactions have been done online as well and payments have been made in online rather than Cash on Delivery.

As per Industry body, ASSOCHAM, the Indian e-commerce consumer size will most likely cross 100 Million in 2017 and will ride on a 65% growth rate(y-o-y) in 2018. The evolution of the Indian Consumer has been pretty rapid in terms of consumption patterns. The shift from offline to online and from COD (Cash on Delivery) to Online Payment has been rather rapid.

Talking of shifts in preferred mode of payment from Cash on Delivery to Online has been rather ironical, because the growth of Indian e-commerce has been because of the Cash on Delivery model. But, owing to demonetization, the rise in online payments is driving e-commerce growth and will continue to do so, in coming years. This goes to show a significant change in attitude and purchasing habit of the Indian Consumer.

For more such insights, you can subscribe to our blog alerts and if you are a small and medium scale merchant, we can help you go global through our international payments solution. Sign up for a demo, to learn more.

*Source: The Economic Times

Payments Form The Core of Digital India

Payments Form The Core of Digital India

The Indian e-commerce market is estimated to grow to $102.8 Billion by 2020. With a growing internet penetration and a plethora of private and government commercial services being offered through the web, that number doesn’t seem unrealistic.  India is by far, one among the top 3 markets for e-commerce globally. If you thought the $100 bn+ figure is staggering, hold your breath because leading research consulting firm Boston Consulting Group(BCG) estimates that the Indian Digital Payments Industry will grow to $500 Billion by 2020.

In recent times, the world has seen a FinTech revolution and India has been at the forefront of spearheading that revolution. The increase in adoption of digital and mobile payments has been staggering and as a testimony, 50% of India’s population is expected to be part of the digital payments industry 2020, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

The growth has been driven by a tremendous government push in digital payments arena fueled by the Digital India proposition.  Several government services at the federal and the state level have migrated in the digital space and encourage digital payments. The growth has been also aided by the fact that majority of the population has an Aadhar card number, which enabled reliable delivery of many essential services through authentic verification.

Having said that, the Indian digital payments scene is largely focused around domestic payments. There’s a large untapped market for international payments. We know that the regulations for international payments is not easy in India, but things are changing rapidly. There is tremendous scope for Indian exporters who are selling online, internationally to ramp up their operations. Not to mention, there’s enough room for exporters who aren’t online, to get their businesses online and sell to the world.

PayTabs is uniquely positioned as a key player in the Indian Payments space, specializing in International Payments. You can visit our website for more information and sign up for a demo if you would like to explore the power of our end to end international payments solution.