Unveiling Razorpay’s Affordability Suite to Sail Through the Pandemic

We have built the Razorpay Affordability Suite to make things easy and smooth for the price-sensitive market of India.

With a majority of their customers under lockdown, shops with shutters down, cash flow almost dried up and the entire staff withered, the concern for most business owners is how they are going to survive the pandemic.

Amidst all of this, we also keep learning about companies trying and experimenting with innovative ways to plan the road ahead.

There is certainty in the fact that the post-COVID-19 world will accelerate some existing trends and create other new ones. Every business, whether online or offline, will have to evolve and iterate themselves in order to thrive. But the bottom line is, there’s no way to predict what will happen in the coming months and what the graph of our economy will look like.

Businesses, big and small, are all taking advantage of new commercial opportunities and while they are at it, we, at Razorpay, have something to offer from our end. Any individual or business can now start offering multiple options to make their offerings affordable and keep their customer happy and their business running. Read this article to know about one of our latest offerings.

Razorpay Affordability Suite: What, why & how

The current trends suggest that Indian consumers are getting used to checking for offers and EMI options when they make a purchase. These options, which were introduced by e-commerce giants, are transformed into a habit, influencing the cart value as well as overall buying patterns.

That said, affordability has always been the central concern for every buyer. Businesses are looking for ways to make their products and services affordable. However, most SMBs and startups have to face a lot of challenges with banks when it comes to enabling the EMI option as a payment mode for their customers.

Razorpay’s Affordability Suite comes as a solution for these challenges. We are a one-stop solution for everything payments and we are only getting started! Listed below are three of the major offerings under our Affordability Suite.

EMIs

We all know what an EMI is and how it works. With Razorpay’s Affordability Suite, you can offer 3 EMI options to your customers.

1. Credit card EMI

Oftentimes, if a business owner wants to offer an EMI option on credit cards, they are asked to meet certain requirements in terms of GMV, their credit history and so on. Infact, in most cases, banks look for a bigger name and in the process, growing businesses are overlooked. With Razorpay, you can start offering credit card EMIs to your customers without any intervention from banks.

2. Debit card EMI

As the name suggests, this option offers an EMI against a debit card held by the customer. Very few businesses get approval by the issuing banks to offer debit card EMIs. Infact, there are approximately 50.3 million credit card holders against 840.6 million debit card holders in India. This means that a majority of your customers never had access to EMIs in the past. With Razorpay’s Debit Card EMIs, you can now make your products/services more affordable for a much wider audience, including consumers in tier 2 & 3 cities.

3. Cardless EMI

One of the latest payment modes is cardless EMIs. Here, payments are made via credits approved by the supported cardless EMI payment partners without any need for an actual credit or a debit card. These partners are businesses like ZestMoney, EarlySalary, InstaCred etc. Cardless EMI has approximately 20 million active users, which is growing by 100% year-on-year.

Razorpay has partnered with these providers and any business can add this option in their checkout to offer the best payment experience to their customers.

PayLater

PayLater is a virtual credit card. This is a one-click checkout option that is preferred for on-the-go payments, especially by millennials. For a business, it is a great option to have in the payment window as it helps in enhancing user experience and keeps calling your customer back because of your offerings. Infact, currently, the user base for this mode of payment is around 50 million!

However, as a business, it might get tedious to do individual integrations with each of these enablers. And this problem of multiple integrations is what the Razorpay Affordability Suite solves. We have directly partnered with the best players to help businesses offer the most trending payment solutions to their customers.

Offers

An offer is an incentive you provide to your customer to make a purchase decision on your website or app. One of the most commonly used offer types is ‘price discounts’. However, creating and running these offers comes with a lot of tech effort.

We have built Razorpay Offers to ease this process. With this feature, you can run offers anytime, track them from the dashboard and analyse the performance to make better business decisions.

These are the features of the Razorpay Affordability Suite. Let us now talk about some of the potential use cases in the current times of this pandemic.

Use cases of Razorpay Affordability Suite

While almost every sector has been massively affected by the pandemic and its consequences, the Razorpay Affordability Suite can help businesses in many sectors spring back to their feet. Some of these sectors and industries are:

Edtech

Edtech is one of the sectors that has seen massive growth during the lockdown. People from all folds of society have experienced education online in some form or the other. While education should be and is equal for all, financial status isn’t. Some courses are expensive and people cannot afford to pay the lump sum amount. Businesses who are offering online courses can now offer options from the Razorpay Affordability Suite to make the purchase easier for their customers.

Ecommerce

E-commerce websites have seen a massive surge in orders since the lockdown restrictions have been lifted. Consumers are now buying essentials as well as non-essentials online.. The average basket size is expected to increase if the e-commerce businesses offer an option to pay through options like EMIs, offers and PayLater.

Healthcare

While there are structured packages for tests across the healthcare industry, it would be a good time to start offering partial payments, EMIs and offers etc on those. Many people restrict themselves from undergoing even the basic tests as they are too expensive. If the laboratory owners and online pharmaceuticals can offer options from the Razorpay Affordability Suite, it might come as a relief to a lot of families during these tough times.

These three are the major industries, but affordability options can be used by any business in any industry. Let us now talk about the benefits of Razorpay Affordability Suite for businesses.

Benefits of Razorpay Affordability Suite for businesses

Now that you know the basics of this product suite in detail, let’s talk about the advantages it brings to businesses:

Enabling one of these offerings on your business will help you acquire the customer who would have otherwise dropped off because of the higher ticket size, which is required to be paid upfront
Affordability tops the chart when it comes to any buyer’s priority. If you are able to make them believe that they can afford the product or service by paying in instalments, you will be able to keep them with you for longer
Data shows that if there’s an option to pay through EMI, the buyer will end up shopping more than they would have otherwise
By offering options like cardless EMI & PayLater options, you will be able to invite the buyers from tier 2 & Tier 3 cities who do not have easy access to credit. In the long run, this will help you penetrate into new geographies and consumer segments
Running an offer will no more be a pain with this product suite. There’s no coding effort required and different offers can be managed from one dashboard
Lastly, all of this will lead to one major advantage: Superior customer experience. And remember, a happy customer is the biggest asset for any business!

Conclusion

Even in the most normal situations, running offers, adding EMIs & PayLater options has become one of the mandatory things for businesses. With Razorpay, businesses from every vertical and of every size can make the best of the affordability trend.

Recent statistics show us that the finances and budgets of individuals are not going as planned. This directly affects your customer’s buying patterns. Hence, during these times of pandemic and financial crunch, offering diverse modes of payments can help your brand stand out.