India: Payment gateway firms focus on analytics to offer customers credit options

DIGITAL payment companies in India are turning to analytics to better understand their users and even provide credit options.

PayU’s recent purchase of Citrus Pay has seen the company develop an internal analytics team designed to help build profiles of individual users that includes things like their average order value and whether they are repeat customers.

Most of these payment gateways aren’t analytics experts though so both Razorpay and Stripe are in talks to partner with analytics provider 16Metrics to build richer data on the customers of merchants using their payment services.

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“It’s only a matter of time before other payment gateway players in India partner with third-party analytics services or form dedicated teams to understand the behaviour of the merchant’s customer base. Within four years, this is likely to be very common in India,” Rishav Kumar, business development officer at Razorpay, told the Economic Times.

For PayU the goal is to use this data to provide a pay-later option to their best customers. The approach is similar to that provided by Mumbai-based Simpl, which offers an interest-free pay-later option up to a monthly limit of 5,000 rupees (US$72.80).

Payment gateway cos like @Razorpay, @stripe, @PayUIndia bet on deep customer insights to offer easier credit options https://t.co/wCMpwMzKPA

— ETtech (@ETtech) November 29, 2016

“Around 20 percent of all payment transactions in India fail usually because of network issues. Through this pay-later option we charge the merchants a specific fee, but it’s an interest free and quick option for the customers,” Amrish Rau, CEO of PayU India told the Economic Times.

The firms are currently experiencing a boom following the government’s decision to remove 500 and 1000 rupee notes from circulation in a crackdown on “black money”.

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