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.
Source: http://to.ly/mk2I
