PayU’s Merchant-Focused Product Innovations SMEs

PayU, the leading online payment solutions provider in India, has been a front runner in product innovations, enabling merchants and consumers with seamless, faster and more convenient digital payment solutions. The past few years have been very exciting for the Indian fintech industry and it has undergone rapid developments, including massive adoption of digital payments by merchants and consumers and the introduction of new modes of payment. As the industry is undergoing rapid transformations and different types of customers have different needs, merchant needs are constantly evolving.

PayU has constantly been responsive to the business needs of its merchants and has supported them by creating cutting edge innovations and payment solutions which have significantly improved ease of business and provided greater convenience to consumers. In recent years, some of the most well received product innovations that PayU has made are:

• PayU App: Facilitating seamless convenient payment solutions, PayU introduced the PayU App - a multi-functional app for its merchants that enables them to conduct business on the go.  Merchants can use the PayU mobile app to monitor their business performance and request for payments.
• PayU Assist: With an aim to simplify business for small and medium merchants and augment the ease of business for 63 million MSMEs in the country, PayU launched the AI-Based Merchant Service Platform – PayU Assist in order to provide automated customer service experience to its ever-growing merchant base. Backed by advanced technology based on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), PayU Assist empowers merchants with an effective self-service platform thereby transforming the entire merchant experience at PayU.
• Long Tail: PayU offers a host of services to facilitate transaction convenience for small merchants, freelancers, entrepreneurs and home-preneurs. It enables small businesses who may not have an IT team or IT know-how to create an online presence and transact easily on their sites. Some of the services are:

o   PayU helps small businesses create a website within a few minutes. It is the only gateway which allows businesses to create a website via a mobile app. This solution caters to mobile first entrepreneurs on the move.

o   Payment links can be sent to customers via SMS, Whatsapp or email, allowing merchants to use the method that best suits them and their customers.

o   Pay Now Button enables a merchant to start collecting payments on their website within 5 minutes by simply embedding the button on their website.

o   Itemized invoicing allows the merchant to give item wise details in invoices to customers instead of one lump sum invoice, which improves customer experience

• Instant Refunds: PayU was the first payment solution provider to offer Instant Refund services, which reduced the turn-around time for credit to be refunded to a customer from 7 days to almost instant refunds. As soon as a merchant initiates a refund request on a credit card transaction, the credit is reflected in the customer's card, making the user experience much richer.
• Subscriptions on PayUmoney: Through this feature, PayU’s merchants had benefit of collecting recurring payments from customers automatically based on a pre-scheduled plan they select. With the introduction of new extension, this service will bring together all the payment methods such as Credit Cards, Debit Cards and Bank Accounts (e-NACH and e-mandate) to handle recurring payments effortlessly.

Mr. Ashutosh Upadhyay, Managing Director & CEO, Effizent Seele Pvt Ltd. said about the PayU products “We have been associated with PayU for the last 2 years and the experience has been phenomenal. As most of our clients are SMEs, we were looking for a payment gateway that is user-friendly. PayU’s user interface is quite easy-to-use, even if people are not tech-savvy. With PayU, we saw a 30% increase in our transactions since last year. Also, the support team is very responsive.”

Ms. Rashmi Sinha, Business Head, Visas Avenue said, “We have been using PayU for the last 5 years and found it very proficient and helpful. It is highly secure and we are able to manage and track our payments quite easily. It takes seconds to check if a payment has been made by the customer and send him reminders, if not.  Majority of people (70%) who carry out transactions opt for paying through PayU because of the smooth checkout and multiple payment options.”