Flipkart Expands Bill Pay

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Walmart-owned Flipkart, the Indian eCommerce giant, has introduced new bill payment and recharge options for its customers. These additions include FASTag, direct-to-home recharges, landline, broadband, and mobile prepaid bill payments, enhancing the existing electricity and mobile prepaid recharge options.

Gaurav Arora, Flipkart’s VP of Payments and SuperCoins, highlighted that the new services aim to streamline digital payments for customers, supporting the vision of a cashless economy.

To integrate these services with the Bharat Bill Payments System (BBPS), Flipkart partnered with BillDesk.

In June, Flipkart launched the UPI payment app super.money, offering up to 5% cashback on purchases, credit-building credit cards, and accessible personal loans.

In March, Flipkart introduced a UPI handle to facilitate instant payments both online and offline, reinforcing its commitment to digital empowerment in India.

Have a great start to the week and I'll be back with more Payment industry updates in your inbox tomorrow!

Cheers,

Marcel

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INSIGHTS

🇪🇺 Europe's Largest Merchant Acquirers.

PAYMENTS NEWS

🇲🇾 AFFIN BANK partners with ACI Worldwide to modernise payments for Malaysian businesses. The new enterprise payments platform streamlines and enhances payment efficiency by consolidating all payment instructions from various channels into a centralized system, handling both high-value and low-value payments.

🇮🇳 Walmart-owned Indian eCommerce marketplace Flipkart added new ways for customers to pay bills and recharge payments while shopping on the platform. The company has added FASTag, direct-to-home recharges, landline, broadband and mobile prepaid bill payments to its app, Flipkart said in a press release.

🇦🇪 Ajman Transport and Visa collaborate to implement contactless payment on buses. The agreement aims to enhance cooperation by forming a partnership to achieve strategic goals and streamline the passenger experience with the country's first contactless payment system in transportation. 

🇵🇰 Paysys Labs partners with Raqami Islamic Digital Bank Pakistan to revolutionize digital payments in Pakistan. The collaboration aims to develop an innovative digital payment solution integrating real-time payment systems such as RAAST.

🇪🇺 European Taxi app FREENOW has integrated Alipay+ cross-border mobile payment solutions with its taxi cab services in seven European countries: Spain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, France, Greece and Austria. The partnership improves the travel experience for Asian visitors to Europe, benefiting from peak summer tourism.

🇨🇭 Finastra completes Swiss Interbank Clearing instant payments readiness project. Using Finastra’s cloud-based Service Bureau offering, Swiss banks can seamlessly transition to facilitating instant interbank payments. It is expected that the 50 largest banks must be able to facilitate instant interbank payments in Switzerland and Liechtenstein by August this year. 

🇺🇸 Billtrust teams Up with Visa to extend Business Payments Network (BPN) collaboration. Visa will continue to offer BPN access to its financial institution clients to streamline the B2B digital payments process for their corporate customers.

🇺🇸 Finix launches New No-Code and Low-Code Payment features. The new tools enable businesses to rapidly build and configure reliable and tailored payment experiences. More on that here

🇬🇧 Nuvei introduces off-ramping of Digital Assets to cards via Mastercard Move in Europe. Nuvei's off-ramp solution with Mastercard is the latest example of its strategy to connect the worlds of traditional payments, open banking and blockchain technology into one seamless experience.

🇦🇺 GoCardless, the bank payment company, has announced a strategic partnership with insurance software platform ICE InsureTech, to deliver faster and seamless automated payment collection for insurance companies in Australia and New Zealand. 

🇧🇷 On the same day that 99Pay received its license to operate as a Payment Institution (PI), a leak of Pix keys was also revealed. The Central Bank declared on July 10, that no sensitive data had been leaked, only registration data. The issue was caused by "occasional system failures" within the institution.

🇮🇹 Adyen, in collaboration with Mastercard, will support Tot in managing business expenses. Through this collaboration, they will assist companies in their administrative management by providing a tool that enables entrepreneurs to simplify business expense management and enhance the autonomy of their collaborators.

🇺🇸 Private equity firms Bain Capital and Reverence Capital have agreed to buy Envestnet in a deal that values the provider of wealth management technology and data at $4.5 billion. The agreement is slated to close in the fourth quarter, and will see shareholders receive $63.15 in cash for each share.

GOLDEN NUGGET

Stripe, founded in 2010 by Patrick and John Collison, has evolved from a basic Payments Facilitator into a multifaceted Financial Infrastructure platform.

Stripe was born out of the Collison brothers' frustration with complex payment systems. Inspired by SliceHost, a VPS hosting company known for its simplicity, Stripe offered a developer-friendly solution that allowed businesses to accept credit card payments with minimal code.

Leveraging their Y Combinator network, the brothers onboarded their first users from the YC alumni, gaining early traction and valuable feedback.

Stripe's offerings have significantly expanded over the years:

2011: Public launch with simple payment APIs.

2013: Stripe Connect for marketplace payments.

2015: Stripe Atlas for global business incorporation.

2016: Radar, a fraud prevention tool.

2020-2023: New products like Stripe Treasury and Stripe Climate, and international growth.

At recent events, Stripe announced several new products:

► Pay by Bank: Real-time bank transfers using the UK's Open Banking framework.

► Stripe Capital: Flexible financing for UK businesses based on transaction history.

► Radar Assistant: Custom fraud rule creation with a natural language interface.

► A/B Testing for Checkout: Simplified optimization of checkout experiences.

► Decoupled Products: Standalone use of Stripe Radar, Stripe Billing, and the optimized checkout suite, independent of Stripe’s payment processing.

Stripe’s growth has been driven by recognizing industry trends like mobile payments, demand for seamless user experiences, increased security focus, and global commerce.

Their developer-centric approach, transparent pricing, and full-stack solutions have resonated with the tech community.

Stripe focuses on several key metrics:

► Acquisition: Expanding through products like Atlas and interoperable solutions.

► Revenue: Enhancing customer revenue with tools like A/B testing and Stripe Capital.

► Retention: Improving with robust fraud prevention and seamless payments.

► Referral: Leveraging platforms like Connect for new customer acquisition.

Stripe’s journey provides key lessons:

1️⃣ Solve core problems with great products.

2️⃣ Identify and serve a core audience before expanding.

3️⃣ Embrace a tech-first approach with clear documentation.

4️⃣ Decouple core products for flexibility and market reach.

5️⃣ Monitor market trends for product evolution.

6️⃣ Address additional customer problems to capture more market share.

Conclusion:

Stripe's transformation from a Payments Facilitator to a financial infrastructure platform showcases strategic product development and market adaptation.

Their recent announcements strengthen their leadership in FinTech, offering a blueprint for other companies aiming to innovate and scale in the industry.

I highly recommend reading this deep dive article by Jas Shah for more info, and valuable lessons from Stripe’s journey so far.

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