e-Commerce retailer Flipkart launched its online payments solution, PayZippy, here earlier this week. Though currently it’s available only to merchants, the consumer-facing product that’s on the anvil will allow customers to save their card details and make easy transactions through their gateway.
But what the Flipkart subsidiary, Flipkart Payment Gateway Services (FPGS) Ltd., has in the pipeline is a prepaid wallet service that allows consumers to shop anywhere on the internet, Mekin Maheswari, Head of Payments and Digital Media, told The Hindu . When asked about government sanctions for setting up such a service, he said that they were in the process of “obtaining requisite clearances from authorities.” More specifically, it is getting clearance from the regulatory authority, Reserve Bank of India.
“We need permissions and clearances to be able to be issuers or prepaid balance. However, these clearances are not needed for what the current service is offering,” Mr. Maheswari added.
Currently, the service only offers a platform where you can save your card details, so you can use the interface to be able to make online payments, without having to go through the entire process of entering your details. The gateway has a process of authenticating you, after you enter your user name and password, making the entire payment process simpler, he added. He added that there are plans to “add more funding instruments to the service”, though he refused to divulge more details on it.
Flyte, Flipkart’s music service that shut down recently, had a closed wallet service which was used to make payments on the service.
The prepaid wallet service for online transactions is not yet available for consumers. The launch version of PayZippy powers card payments for domestic merchant websites and mobile sites, a release stated.
What it offers is higher optimisation and security at the payment level, and Flipkart sources say the product is very scalable. Sachin Bansal, co-founder and CEO, Flipkart.com said that their products Marketplace and PayZippy have the potential of changing the payments ecosystem. “It’s an exciting beginning.”
The customer-facing product that’s on the anvil will allow consumers to make online payments across services and merchants. The company claims it will partner with about 2,000 merchants by March 2014.
They can save their card details in their PayZippy account, and then use this for transactions on merchant websites without having to type or share sensitive card details. Flipkart says this will minimise errors and transaction duration.
Online payments are yet to reach the level of seamlessness seen in other markets. According to industry estimates, about two crore online card transactions are made in India.
