Here’s an interesting fact: More than 40% of the B2B sales made in India are given on credit! This has been the nature of business in India for a very long time. And it’s not changing anytime soon. The relative or absolute pain of chasing after payments is immense. Almost every business, big or small, endures this ordeal almost every day.
If it is one thing to close a deal with the ambivalent Indian customer, it is quite another to collect payments from him or her. It often happens that a customer or client leaves the business hanging with unrequited payment requests.
Razorpay Payment Links has been one of our earnest endeavours in trying to solve this problem. Instant links to collect payments instantly! In the last one year, we have seen a tremendous growth of our product with more than 1 crore payment links being created.
While this makes us feel proud about being able to help the smallest of businesses to the mightiest of banks collect hassle-free payments without any coding in a matter of minutes, we also know that getting payments on these links is certainly one of the most daunting challenges for them.
The typical ordeal for an MSME goes like this.
Day 0 – “Hello ma’am, we are so happy you want to buy our service, let me send out a payment link to you right now..”
- Link sent
Day 1 – “Hi, I hope you liked our service. Just wanted to check if you are having any difficulties in finding the payment link? Please let me know.”
- Few days later
Day 5 – “Hello ma’am, for the service you had used last Friday, we still haven’t received the payment. I have resent the link to you“
- Business resends the payment link
Day 6 – “Ma’am, payment is still pending”. To this, the customer says, “Can I pay you by an account transfer or UPI?” The businessman replies, “Of course, you can open the link and do so. I will also send you the account details and UPI ID additionally.”
- The customer finds it difficult to find the link and sends the money via account transfer
- The business spends half a day in carrying out the payment reconciliation, using the UTR of the transfer and again calls up to confirm with the customer
This is probably a softer version of what really happens. It is not unheard of for businesses to even send someone over to collect the payment in cash. While some of this is problematic owing to structural and possibly, cultural underpinnings, there is still a window of opportunity for us to deliver more value to our merchants.
Introducing reminders on Razorpay Payment Links
Payment Links will now come with automated reminders, which are orchestrated by the system based on the payment status of the link. These automated reminders will help you do the following:
- Increase the number of paid invoices and links
- Reduce cost and manual effort required to collect payments
- Reduce the number of days taken by your customer to make the payment
You can either schedule the payment reminders based on the date of sending the payment link, or if you set an expiry to the payment link, you can have the reminders sent before the payment link expires.
“Schedule a reminder 1 day before expiry”
“Schedule a reminder the day after you send the link”
The reminders will be sent on SMS/email or on both. The reminders will be sent at a time in the day based on our analysis of the payment patterns that we have noticed across a wide range of consumers and industries.
Our merchants cited that automated reminders can complement the pursuit process in terms of the number of touchpoints through the collections process (SMSes were cited to have a better impact in this regard.) This can also be of help in nudging customers if they have been issued a link, which they haven’t paid yet. A classic example would be where a customer has expressed interest to buy but hasn’t crossed the threshold to go ahead and make the payment
We already have over a few hundred merchants sending 100,000 reminders using this product, just through organic discovery in the early rollout phase. I would suggest you go ahead and take a crack at it as well.
Yes, we can …get paid faster!
Don’t use Razorpay Payment Links yet? Start collecting payments without a website or app today!
Also read: Collect Payments faster with the all New powerful Payment Links
