
Razorpay (YC W15) offers Stripe-style payment experience in India - harshilmathur
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/22/razorpay-offers-stripe-style-payments-focused-squarely-on-indian-e-commerce-plays/
======
harshilmathur
Co-founder Harshil here. We built this when we saw how the payments experience
was a mess in India compared to the western world. The payments in India are
much more complex than USA and Europe because of the strict regulation,
multiple payment methods and unreliable bank gateways among other things.
Consequently, the on-boarding experience sucks and failure rates are in double
digits. We aim to tackle these issues and shield the merchant from them, to
provide a seamless, easy to integrate experience. If you have any questions,
fire my way!

~~~
ignoramous
First up, congrats to you and Kumar. It takes a tremendous effort to tackle
something like this in India.

0\. How does your product compare against juspay.in and payzippy (which I
believe has been discontinued)?

1\. How much development do you plan to do open source?

2\. Who have been your mentors?

Merci.

~~~
harshilmathur
0 - Payzippy was discontinued. And even so, their offerings were not much
different from other gateways in the country.

Juspay offers their integration on top of other gateways. Thus, it solves only
part of the problem, since you still have to deal with tough onboarding
process.

1 - We are very grateful of the open-source community and do plan to give back
to it in whatever ways we can. Follow our github organisation and you will not
be disappointed.

2 - YC partners are really great and have provided most of the mentoring we
needed. Plus, other YC companies alums form a very strong network which help
you out when you need it.

~~~
ignoramous
Any mentors from the Indian start-up scene that you've looked to advice for?

~~~
shk
Yes, Chintan Bakshi from Jaipur helped us during pre-YC days.

------
HashNuke
The pricing is Stripe-like if only handling domestic transactions. If a
customer wants to sell internationally too then there is

    
    
      * 5k setup fee
    
      * 5k annual fee (excluding service tax). Approx $90/yr.
    
      * 2% per transaction
    

Instamojo provides a nice payment experience too and with a fee of 1.9% per
transaction (if you don't use the hosting feature).

Wonder why the more expensive pricing. A simplified per-transaction pricing
would be nice to sell internationally. Maybe increase the per-transaction
charge for international transactions or add a fee like $0.5 extra.

P.S: I'm not affiliated with Instamojo in anyway. I've been on the hunt for a
payment solution recently and settled with Gumroad actually.

~~~
harshilmathur
Hi, You are right, we want to make the pricing more uniform as we go. But
there are some limitations around that we need to solve. As for instamojo,
they have a good product but they are not a payment gateway in the stripe
sense, they are more of gumroad. They support specific type of products whose
amounts needs to be pre-decided on their platform. While, we support all kinds
of online transactions which you can integrate directly on your site.

~~~
HashNuke
Ah yes, I was only comparing from a seller's PoV. Most non-ecommerce startups
have fixed plans/pricing I guess.

B/w you might want to link to the
[http://docs.razorpay.com](http://docs.razorpay.com) site in the
"documentation" link on your homepage. And maybe rename that /documentation
url to /faq instead.

In all the excitement, I did forget: Congrats on launching ~!

~~~
harshilmathur
Thanks! Yeah, that's a good point, we will fix that.

------
jabo
Congrats on launching in India. It's great to see activity in this space.

I see a tab called "Education" which seems to list a specific use-case for a
payment processor. Any particular reason you have that as a dedicated tab
there? Is that the market you're positioning the service for?

Also, just curious, mind elaborating on this from the article:

    
    
      "Right now, for a business to take online payments in the country, 
      it needs to go through a lot of paperwork, bureaucratic red tape, and wait time, 
      often in a process that needs to be done region-by-region."
    

Specifically, how do you guys work around this?

~~~
harshilmathur
Our initially entry point in the market was education sector but now we offer
gateway to any business accepting online payments.

We have to follow the law of land and regulatory compliance but most of the
red tape that the current gateways ask for is not required by regulation. The
gateways are trying to make onboarding too safe and hence end up making it
very complex. We want to protect the merchants from the dirty work of dealing
with regulation through a very streamlined interface and we handle everything
in the background.

------
zodvik
Where can I try your payment experience?

The TC article says you're live on Shifter, NanoWE & Zostel. But, Shifter
doesn't seem to have an online payment option, Zostel redirects me to PayU and
cannot find anything to buy on NanoWE.

~~~
akshxy
Hi, this is Akshay, founder at NanoWE. Our marketplace is live at
www.nanowe.com/demo but isn't open yet for buying products. We're using Stripe
for the US customers and recently successfully tested and integrated Razorpay
for the Indian customers. I'd recommend Razorpay as it eliminates the pain of
too much paperwork - and of course their support is amazing, the team always
goes a step ahead to help you onboard!

~~~
shk
Thanks for the kind words :)

------
shahocean
Hey Harshil, Congrats man! Nice to see startup coming from Jaipur. As a
marketer, one question comes to mind, How do you think you will get the user
base?

~~~
shk
Till now, we have mostly tapped our friends, Jaipur and IIT network. We have
already got good traction without any PR. We are mostly targeting startups,
ecommerce and other early stage ventures at the moment and evolve our
marketing model from there.

~~~
shahocean
Just added you on Producthunt!

------
diziet
It's great that there are companies targeting these specific geographies --
however, if the market is large enough and worth going into, wouldn't Stripe
itself want to solve these issues? Of course, having senior leadership / on
the ground folks in India is an advantage to navigating that, but isn't that
what international offices are for~

~~~
harshilmathur
Frankly, we were tired of waiting for Stripe to come and improve the payment
ecosystem that existed in India :D On a more serious note, Stripe has only
entered payments markets that are similar to US. India is very different from
those markets and for tackling it they will have to modify the product
significantly to meet the regulatory rules like 3D Secure and support the
dominant local payment methods. And if they do try to do that, we will still
have a couple of years head-start.

------
qikquestion
Congratz on the launch.

I have some questions

1\. If a startup is not incorporated, can we still use Razorpay ? I guess
instamojo allows it

2\. If I have a static site, can I still use Razorpay for payments ?

3\. What is the turnaround time for depositing the money into sellers bank
account ? What is the frequency ?

4\. Do you provide some webhooks functionality ?

~~~
harshilmathur
1\. Not at this time. We will be launching support for that soon. 2\. Yes, you
can but then you will have to manually capture the payments from dashboard.
3\. The money is transferred on T+2 day where T is day of transaction. 4\. Not
a this time. We definitely want to support that very soon.

~~~
qikquestion
Thanks for the answers.

Reg (2) Is it like [https://stripe.com/checkout](https://stripe.com/checkout)
? What you meant by capture the payments from dashboard ? Do you mean I have
to pull the payment details from dashboard api ?

One last question : How extensively net banking is supported ?

~~~
harshilmathur
Yes, its similar.

No, you just need to login on the Razorpay dashboard and click on capture on
the payments you want to transfer to your account.

We support 35+ banks in netbanking right now.

~~~
qikquestion
Thanks.

Some of q & a here can be part of FAQ section in the site.

~~~
shk
Sure. We will update it going forward.

------
zaatar
Congrats on launching! How will you differentiate yourselves from Stripe when
they launch in India?

~~~
harshilmathur
We will always have the local player advantage over Stripe. Payments is
closely related to the infrastructure of the country and hence, just copy
paste of US model won't work. Plus, clearing regulatory hurdles and modifying
their platform for supporting local instruments of India will take 1-2 years,
so we will have that headstart too.

------
curiousbyday
Hey Razorpay team. Big congrats on the launch :) I had a question on
competition in the market. Many posts here have highlighted big players like
PayU, CCAvenue and small merchants focused players like Instamojo, Gumroad.

Recently, HDFC announced new strategy around cards to be accepted by small
players ([http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/H...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/HDFC-Bank-devises-new-card-strategy/articleshow/46498445.cms)). Do
you think this will affect you especially in terms of the transaction fees?

~~~
shk
The article is very light on details so cannot comment concretely without more
context. But at a guess, I think this might be for physical card transactions
since it mentions swipe machines specifically.

------
sudhirj
Just to confirm, this still isn't going to support tokenizing a card and
charging it later at will? I'm guessing that's still illegal in India.

~~~
shk
Charging later at will is not allowed by regulations in India. An explanation
of why it might be so -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206182)

------
plumeria
Please come to Costa Rica! You can work with the Banco Nacional which has a
partnership with Paypal also. We need to have a developer-friendly service.

------
superasn
Would be very much interested if you guys can figure out a way to create
recurring subscriptions. I have been looking for a solution for a very long
time and just posted a thread here on HN about it [1]. Would love to hear your
thoughts and how you plan to offer it.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205892)

~~~
harshilmathur
Hi, Yeah, we saw that thread and it was really interesting. My co-founder
replied there too
[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9206182&goto=item%3Fid...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9206182&goto=item%3Fid%3D9205892)
.

At this point, I can only tell you we have a plan to launch this very soon.

------
anirvan_m
Hi – this is a wonderful start towards solving a problem which seemed to have
been relegated to the distant future. I was wondering, do you folks support
the 'aggregator' model - where a startup can simply serve as the facilitator
of the payment without actually holding the money?

Wrote a mail to you as well to understand better how I can integrate your
solution.

All the very best!

~~~
harshilmathur
Hi, We do not support that model at this point because of additional
regulatory hurdles. We do have it in our roadmap though.

------
ankurzoro
hey , congrats for getting into YC , our Indian market greatly need a awesome
and friendly payment gateway provider

few things i would like to ask

• how many people are currently employed in razorpay , what about customer
service?

• integration with magento , woocommerce etc is available right away ?

• do you provide wallet services ? , and what about legal issues regarding
storing card info ? i see you are pci cleared , can you clear a bit ?

• Are all credit /debit cards are supported ?

• You say i dont need a different bank account , i have an LLP , and have a
ecommerce store that deals with fashion , so i wont need to have a account in
LLP's name ? what about PAN card ?

the biggest hurdle is regarding the red tape and legal issues in India , if
you can take care of those this is a huge demand for a service like this ( you
have to scale hup your market and give an awesome experience before stripe
decides to come in India )

good look , would love to be in contact :)

~~~
harshilmathur
\- We are a small team right now, but we can assure you will get better
service than many of the large companies

\- Yes integration with shopify, magento, woocommerce, opencart, cscart,
nopcommerce, whmcs etc. is already available.

\- We are PCI Certified but we do not store card numbers and we do not provide
wallet service at this time.

\- Yes, all CC/DC are supported

\- You will need the bank account in the name of your business. What we mean
is you don't need a separate merchant account for accepting payments which
some bank gateways ask you for.

Yes, that's what our aim is, to protect the customers from the red tape and
complex regulatory issues while providing a clean integration experience.

~~~
ankurzoro
thanks and good luck

------
shivang
A lot like Instamojo, but Razorpay looks more refined product. Signed up and
used the API a bit. Using it was a breeze. Also the documentation is like
Stripe which helps a lot.

Congrats on the launch! I am hopeful that recurring transaction problem will
also be tackled later on.

~~~
harshilmathur
Thanks for the kind words! And, yes, we are definitely working on the feature.

------
eklavya
Hey guys, best of luck in your efforts.

I have a question, while it makes sense to have payments in the range of 100s
I see 2.5% adding up to uncomfortable amounts easily in the range of 1000s and
beyond that it's a mini heart attack :P

Do you plan to have a max cap on your charges?

~~~
harshilmathur
Hi, unfortunately Visa, Mastercard and other card networks charge in
percentage terms without a cap and there is nothing anyone can do about it. We
do offer better pricing at volume. Also, think of it as a cost of doing
business like service tax which is also always in percentage. Even huge
players amazon, flipkart have to pay it in percentage terms only inspite of
their enormous volumes.

~~~
eklavya
Oh, thanks. Didn't know that. I wonder if it's so just because these big
companies control almost all the cash flow or there are costs which increase
linearly with the paid amount.

~~~
harshilmathur
Yes, most credit cards and debit card transactions have to be routed through
their network and they charge in percentage only. Their costs are hardly
affected by the paid amount but that is the business model they and all the
banks pursue to make it uniform for all big and small players.

------
sanmon3186
Noob question. Does pricing of payment gateways include interchange fee for
card based transactions? If not then that means online payment cost is 5-6% of
the transaction value to the merchant (say for 2% interchange fee) which seems
huge.

~~~
harshilmathur
Hi No, the pricing we have given on our site includes interchange fees as
well.

------
ilolu
Congrats on launching! . I have also been interested in launching a Payments
startup (but mostly mobile based). If possible, Can you point me to the
regulation requirements for a payment gateway in India ?

~~~
harshilmathur
Thanks. The most important regulation is the "Payments and Settlement Act" of
RBI. Sorry, I can't link to their website, they do not allow it but just
google it.

------
anupshinde
Great Work. How do you plan to support recurring transactions with minimum
manual intervention? (I think they do not allow automatic charges of CC in
India)

~~~
shk
We are still working on this and will share details once we have something
concrete.

------
boundlessdreamz
Will you be adding support for recurring transactions for non indian credit
cards?

~~~
harshilmathur
Hi, We plan to in the future. We haven't many people requesting it since most
of them have majority of Indian customers which can not have recurring billing

~~~
sudhirj
How will you reconcile recurring payments with 3D secure requirements?

~~~
ignoramous
One way to do that would be to monitor SMSes for 2FA codes. This can be easily
done on Android and iOS. The app can run the payments flow in a phanthomjs
esque environment and read off 2FA values from the SMS inbox, and bam! Payment
done. Also, there are other options for authorizing recurring payments but at
fixed amt, and paper work can't be avoided.

~~~
harshilmathur
Not every bank sends 2FA codes via SMS. For example my debit card with SBI has
a static password that I need to put in for every payment

~~~
ignoramous
In that case, you could provide the user with a on-device one-click
authenticate button (via notification/email, reminding her/him to approve the
payment) that'd push the credentials out to your phantom-js instance. I am not
sure what RBI complaince mandates, but one might be a strongbox.io away from
implementing such a scheme server-side as well, if legal. A lot of care must
go into securing such systems, no doubt. And there might be simpler
alternatives that I simply cannot think of.

~~~
shk
Just like cvv, we are not allowed to store the static passwords.

~~~
ignoramous
Well, you don't really store the passwords on your servers, but rather store
it on user's own devices (in a keystore, for instance). The user then agrees
to push the credentials to your servers periodically instead of typing the
password to authorize the payment.

------
zohansinha11
heyy congrats harshil a long way to go

many startups are gonna place trust in you ( including mine) , ball is in your
court , win them over good luck

P.S what will be procedure of shifting from CC avenue to razorpay

and get wallet service as soon you can

~~~
captn3m0
Thanks a lot for your trust. I don't have much idea of how you have integrated
with CCAvenue, but our docs are pretty easy to understand and explain
integration steps pretty well.[0]

[0]: [https://docs.razorpay.com/](https://docs.razorpay.com/)

------
zohansinha11
sorry for the noob question but what will be the way to send a payment
confirmation sms to customer ( magento)

~~~
captn3m0
Once the payment is confirmed, our integration passes the control back to your
code. You can use any sms API such as twilio to send the sms then.

~~~
zohansinha11
thankss

------
karthiksrinivas
how are you solving the 2 factor authentication by RBI ?

~~~
shk
We support 2-step authentication as mandated by RBI.

