Ezetap was founded seven years ago in Bangalore by Silicon Valley veterans who had all returned to India. The startup has deployed more than 2,30,000 smart service points on its platform, with customers ranging from brick-and-mortar retailers to e-commerce players to leading enterprises. Ezetap has launched a device called Ezesmart, India’s first open-platform, GPRS/3G/4G terminal enabled with Aadhaar pay and eKYC, that delivers a superior digital payment experience.
“We have raised US$ 51 million in funding and investors include Social Capital, the Silicon Valley firm led by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, American Express, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, JS Capital (Jonathan Soros),” says Abhijit Bose, Founder & CEO of Ezetap.
Multiple payment options
Bose elaborates on the three major problems for enterprises that the Ezetap solves:
- Accepting any and every form of payment: The number of ways a consumer can pay have exploded. The business should be able to offer multiple payment options which delivers the perfect experience for each customer. Ezetap makes this easy for a business. Regardless of payment type (Cards, Wallets, UPI, Points, EMI), location (in-store, at-home, at the table, at a kiosk, on their mobile), interface (Device, QR, Kiosk, PC, App, SMS), or bank, Ezetap can configure and turn everything on in one shot. This also make businesses future-proof. Whatever becomes popular with their customers tomorrow will be supported and can be turned on by Ezetap whenever they want.
- Integrating payments seamlessly into software that businesses use: Accepting payments is only half the problem. All enterprises today use software to run their businesses. “Our platform has been designed from scratch to be flexible and integrate easily into any software running on any form factor. This is why some of the largest enterprises in India – across eCommerce, telecom, insurance, modern retail, utilities, and insurance – have all moved away from traditional payment terminals and now run their transactions on the Ezetap platform,” says Bose.
- Providing single and intelligent view of their customers and sales: Ezetap offers a single portal through which enterprises can see what sales are happening across all of the touchpoints in real-time. Bose explains that reconciliation of sales across payment instruments and locations has always been a headache for businesses, Ezetap solves that by saving enterprises money and allowing them to grow more quickly. “Our analytics product is also optimised so that all of this transaction data can be used to analyse their best customer and give them value added services such as offers and credit instantly, which will drive additional sales and loyalty,” he adds.
The fintech startup serves enterprises of all sizes. Pointing out that the largest players in eCommerce and logistics, telecom, insurance, bill payment and utilities, oil and gas, and modern retail, all use Ezetap, Bose comments, “In addition, we have over 1,00,000 small businesses using our solution, ranging from restaurants to service providers to traditional retail. The common USP is that all of the enterprises that choose Ezetap want to integrate payments with their business software and all of them want to customise the perfect customer payment experience which was not possible before.”
Challenging the status quo
Since inception, the company has always focused on challenging the status quo which has resulted in many industry firsts. Bose asserts that this is an organisation wide culture that is fostered and encouraged with every employee. The many firsts include –
- A business model based on software, not fees – which has since been adopted as the new payments model across many regions.
- Manufacturing the world’s first EMV and pin device <$50 in 2013. Also deployed the world’s first fintech SDK to integrate into any third party application in 2011.
- The first company to create a truly portable fintech platform that can easily work on any devices running on any O/S. “This is one of the reasons that Ezetap is being deployed across rural areas as part of India’s financial inclusion initiatives,” he says, adding that they are proud to been recognised as one of the 50 most disruptive private tech companies in the world for the last three years in a row.
With a vision for a truly digital India, Ezetap has grown in sectors that help digital payments expand to every nook and corner of India. Other expansion plans include our foray into the Middle East and South East Asian markets, starting with Dubai and Malaysia. “eCommerce and logistics have helped us a great deal in making this vision a reality. From a technology and product standpoint, we will continue to innovate and invest more in R&D to ensure that we continue to be at the leading edge of the fast changing world of payments,” affirms Bose.
If you have an interesting article / experience / case study to share, please get in touch with us at editors@expresscomputeronline.com