We are not averse to acquisitions in payment solution space: PayZippy's COO Siddharth Das

Home grown e-commerce major Flipkart, which launched its own payment gateway service PayZippy for end users and merchants under a separate firm Flipkart Payment Gateway Services (FPGS) Pvt Ltd may consider acquiring a startup in this space.

"We are never averse to acquisitions if that is what would enable us to deliver the value that we want to deliver to customers. There could be pieces that are out there that can be abstracted into the system through which we don't have to build all over again," said PayZippy's COO Siddharth Das.

For some of the big e-commerce players who have entered the payment gateway space, acquiring a small startup and building on top of it could be a logical solution. But Das informed that as of now they don't see any obvious gap or opportunity looming out there that could be filled through acquisition.

"Most of what we are going to be is yet to come. We will move the experience of payments significantly from where it stands today as we are working to build solutions that solve friction points for customers to enrol onto a payment platform and pay for anything that they need," said Das, even as he agrees that PayZippy is not strategic to Flipkart.

The payment gateway solutions space is dominated by small players. Home grown e-commerce companies are trying to do what big guns like Amazon and eBay have done in the more developed market through PayPal, etc. Presently, most of the players are focusing on m-payment solutions as e-payment solutions are dominated by established players like PayPal. In contrast, mobile solutions are slightly complicated due to the lengthy payment process that needs to be incorporated on small screens by providing user friendly UI and UX.

However, there is no real winner in the mobile payment space. There is a clear need to re-engineer web based payment solutions to make them more mobile friendly. Launched in July 2013, the B2C version of PayZippy allows customers to store their card details and make payments on partner merchant sites. It has also tied up with merchants to give offers like cash backs, discounts on transactions, and gift vouchers to initial customers of the service. The B2B version launched earlier this year enabled card payments for domestic merchant websites and mobile sites.

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