Digital payments on Razorpay up 76% in Q4

Razorpay on Tuesday said digital payment transactions on its platform were up by 76% in the quarter ended March 2021 (Q4), versus a year ago, indicating large-scale digital adoption by businesses and consumers.

In Q4, tier II and III cities and towns continued to contribute over 50% of all online transactions, according to the Bengaluru-based fintech startup’s eighth edition of The Era of Rising Fintech report.

Payment options such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) saw a nearly a 7x (569%) growth in Q4 as more consumers chose to avoid bulk payments and prefer affordable payment modes, the report added.

"Small Businesses are providing newer payment methods and reaching out to a wider customer base that transcends geographical boundaries,” Vedanarayan Vedantham, head of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) business at Razorpay, said.

Founded in 2014, Razorpay claims to provide software-based payment solutions to over 5 million businesses. The Y Combinator accelerated startup counts GIC, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, and MasterCard as its marquee investors. In December 2018, the company launched an SMB lending platform Razorpay Capital.  

Some of the other findings in the report are as follows,

• As tourism opened up, Razorpay enabled online transactions in Jammu & Kashmir grew 36%, catapulting the state into Razorpay’s rankings of top 10 digitally inclusive states and union territories for the first time. It ranked above Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. 
• eNACH on Razorpay saw a growth of nearly 25,000 times in Q4, displaying a growing trend of businesses preferring automated recurring payment options. The beginning of 2020 recorded just about 500 transactions in eNACH payments, Razorpay added.
• Razorpay-enabled online transactions in the travel businesses grew 52% in Q4.
• Razorpay-enabled online transactions in the food and beverages industry grew 69% in Q4.
• Online transactions powered by Razorpay in schools, colleges and online educational institutes grew 40% in Q4, as acceptance of online mode for fees and salary payments rose.
• Online transactions in the real-estate space grew 65% sequentially. It had a 14% decline in second half (H2) of 2020, versus H1.
• Digital transactions in the mutual funds space grew 69% sequentially.