PayU backed by Naspers rolls out UPI app

Global payments gateway PayU is now a part of the Indian government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform. PayU India has launched its own UPI app that was in the pilot stage for three months, ET reports. The app is already being used by three lakh customers and has recorded transactions of over Rs. 12 crore. PayU is backed by South African investment giant Naspers and it integrates online payment services and provides tools to facilitate e-commerce activities.

“In the first year of our wallet business, we never crossed volumes beyond Rs 10 crore in peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions. But (with UPI), we have crossed over Rs 12 crore worth of transactions in the past three months itself,“ Jitendra Gupta, MD of PayU India told ET. This leap is largely due to the fact that UPI doesn’t impose any transaction limits. PayU’s UPI app has been developed in partnership with YES Bank, which has been among the key drivers of digital payments in the country. At present, over 50 banks support UPI payments.

Interestingly, PayU-owned Citrus Pay – a company it acquired last September – also operates its own UPI app. “We wanted to test our Citrus UPI app initially and check for initial adoption there… We have opened it only to our wallet users so far,” Gupta said. PayU’s $130 million acquisition of Citrus Pay is the biggest in the Indian fin-tech space till date. It is said to have given PayU a customer base of over 30 million, who can transact on popular internet services like BookMyShow, Zomato, MakeMyTrip, Myntra, Grofers, etc.

PayU’s transactions have seen a steady growth riding on India’s push for digital payments. It breached the $1 billion mark in June, up from $700 million in March. The payments gateway expects to turn profitable by 2018, with much of the growth to come from the new UPI app. PayU has roped in its key online merchants on the platform. Over 13,000 offline sellers have also been on-boarded. All PayU transactions are secured with 128 bit SSL encryption and two-factor authentication.

Source: bgr.in