RazorpayX – How We Built a Startup in a Startup

If you’re someone who’s interested in the Indian fintech industry, then you surely know of Razorpay. 

Razorpay’s extensive product suite caters to accepting, processing, and disbursing payments. Founded in 2014, the journey of Razorpay over the years has been incredible, powering disruptors of all scale. With product after product, we have been able to provide the best payment solutions for all sorts of business cases, no matter how complicated or straightforward.  

With over 800,000 merchants using Razorpay’s payment solutions, the biggest names in the market ride with us. Being the 7th employee at Razorpay, I’ve seen the company unfurl into a fintech superpower in India. And, I can’t be more proud to be a part of the overall growth and mission of the company.

Today, I’d like to shed some light on the most exciting product I’ve been working on – RazorpayX, our platform that supercharges banking.

The story is interesting because it is not just about a great product that we are building, but also about how we came about it. 

In 2018, we announced our entry into business banking with RazorpayX in our flagship event, FTX.

You may wonder – why?

The gap in the system

How business banking is carried out is not the most efficient way to manage finances. With traditional business banking, businesses spend way too many hours on manual labor every month, while dealing with buggy software and complex infra systems. 

Several Razorpay merchants conveyed to us how their business banking experience is flawed, which got us thinking – we’ve already enhanced the payments experience. Who better to take business banking forward?

So, we validated the opportunity we had at hand and delved into some primary research.  We talked to 400+ merchants to understand their experience with business banking and drew insights from our conversations.

Next, we surveyed 1,500 CxOs and gathered

• 64% of companies believe their payment service providers are best equipped to solve their payment challenges as opposed to banks
• 10x as many companies polled believe payment service providers innovate better than banks
• 36% of businesses believe manual dependency and reconciliation are the biggest challenges in their current money management

Our solution to bridging the gap – RazorpayX

Since we deal with many different payment flows, we wanted to create a whole new platform that would be dedicated only to building a product that would do away the challenges of business banking. We began to create a platform on which we can further build products that would ease the process challenges for businesses, like integrations with payroll software, and more.

During the early access, merchants were able to use the platform with RazorpayX Lite. We created an entire API and dashboard payouts platform over RazorpayX Lite. In a few months, thousands of merchants started using it to make payouts at scale to vendors, customers, and even employees. 

From then to now, the platform has gone through major upgrades.

A few use-cases for RazorpayX

1. Lending companies like Kissht and EarlySalary have been unable to disburse loans to their customers instantly owing to their dependencies on manual processes and cumbersome banking tech. With RazorpayX, these companies were able to disburse loans within seconds
2. E-commerce companies that provide multiple payment options to their customers have traditionally not been able to process refunds for all methods with equal speed owing to an inconsistent customer experience. Cure.fit, Voylla.com, and other players in the market use RazorpayX to make instant refunds to their customers, irrespective of the payment mode (including CoD)
3. A key component of making successful games is the process of ensuring winners get rewards, and fast. Dependencies on net-banking and manual methods were not optimal for progressive gaming companies. RazorpayX has helped companies like Mobile Premier League, RummyCulture, Pokersaints, and many more to transfer winnings immediately, and with ease

As we scaled, we realised current accounts would be integral to the product because of the growing demand to support higher volumes of transactions and superior customer experience. We wanted businesses to have the freedom to define their processes, unlike traditional current accounts.

During our event FTX 2.019, we announced RazorpayX’s expansion into current accounts, payroll, and corporate credit cards.

We built RazorpayX with Current Accounts in partnership with RBL bank and included all standard banking services like cheque book, debit card, and accounting statements. We merged these banking services along with powerful tech capabilities like API banking, approvals workflow, and insightful reports.

Next, we wanted to have a payroll system within RazorpayX’s platform. And, payroll is fragmented without a clear-cut solution, which got thinking – should we build? Should we buy? Or should we partner?

The more we thought, partnering made more sense, and we found the best company to partner with. Opfin, a payroll and HR management software company, turned out to be just right to automate the entire payroll process of a business, seamlessly.

Opfin does more than just payroll and fund transfers. It also manages tax filing and compliance via a unified platform, without having to hire any external vendors. 

Ok, current account, check.

Payroll, check.

What next?

We wanted to go just one step further. 

Corporate credit cards.

We’re partnering with banks and networks to build corporate credit cards from the ground up that offer immense flexibility with limited-time credit period and auto-repayment for businesses. These cards powered by our credit intelligence engine can be used to make payments towards Google Ads, Facebook Ads, AWS, Business Travel, and so much more.

So far and more

Even in early access, we’ve hit 3 billion annualised TPV serving thousands of merchants. We’re also processing over 2 lakh payouts every day, out of which 1 lakh is consumer loans.

We are perpetually endeavouring to make the RazorpayX platform more and more stable every day. We want to further grow the platform by building and integrating products that can extend to simplify business banking while providing the best possible experience to prove all businesses a viable alternative to traditional business banking.

We are constantly working towards reimagining and redefining business banking in India, and we’re looking forward to all of you joining us in our journey.