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Fintech Unicorn Razorpay, on Thursday, announced that it registered 3 times growth in payment volumes over the past 12 months, thanks to the thousands of SMBs, especially from Tier 2 & 3 cities, who chose the payment gateway as they went online for the first time.

This led to large-scale adoption of digital payments across the country, as Razorpay witnessed over 54 per cent of digital transaction volume coming from SMBs in Tier 2 & 3 cities alone. Online transactions in cities like Ahmedabad and Jaipur grew by about 50 per cent within a week’s time.

The full-stack financial services company aims to enable 5 million new Indian SMBs to adopt digital payments in the next 12 months. Currently the company serves over 5 million businesses, including Facebook, Airtel, BookMyShow, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred and ICICI Prudential ,among others. Plans are on to invest heavily in strengthening the security and fraud analytics infrastructure, along with building hyperlocal solutions to provide a seamless and safe payment experience for all. In the last six months, Razorpay has witnessed 40 per cent month-on-month growth.

Razorpay also provided access to credit to thousands of SMBs through its neo-banking platform, RazorpayX, disbursing credit of upwards of ₹250 crore per month, helping Entrepreneurs get access to working capital. The company aims to scale this up to ₹500 crore per month.

Commenting on what led to increased digital payment adoption, Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-founder of Razorpay, said: “One of the significant overnight changes we saw in how people were approaching the initial lockdown period of isolation and uncertainty in 2020 was in their digital spending behaviors, especially people from Tier 2 & 3 cities. Online shopping became the new normal but it left the offline businesses grappling with fear of losing their business. Even some of the online businesses in the essentials category, bill payments, education etc were struggling to keep up with demand and ensure business continuity. We wanted to do our bit with building customised solutions to help struggling businesses adapt to the new normal by providing flexible easy-to-integrate payment and banking solutions.”

Some of these products included Same Day settlements allowing businesses to receive funds in just a few hours instead of the usual 3-5 working days settlement period. Other products launched to help businesses improve their cash flows and manage operational expenses better included Working Capital loans, Instant Refunds, UPI AutoPay and partnerships with stalwarts like Visa & PayPal, he said.

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