As RBI lifts curbs, Razorpay, Cashfree eye lost market share

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Razorpay and Cashfree are trying everything to win back merchants that they could not onboard earlier due to an RBI embargo, now that they have got the payment aggregator licence.

Last year, the Reserve Bank of India had stopped merchant onboarding for both Razorpay and Cashfree. That embargo ended only on Tuesday when the regulator awarded them the final payment aggregator licence.

Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill Courses

The two competitors are trying to onboard the long backlog of merchants and woo new ones faster than the other.

“We have around 8,000 merchants who have completed their KYC formalities and are ready to go live with us. Our first target is to connect with them and clear up the queue, it could take another seven days,” said Reeju Datta, cofounder of Cashfree.

Harshil Mathur, cofounder of Razorpay, said on Tuesday night they were busy setting up systems and processes to clear out the backlog and in the second half of Wednesday the first batch of merchants started going live.


Pricing games

With the two venture-funded players back in the business, industry insiders said there could be a price war breaking out in the online merchant payment space. In the last one or two years, well-funded players such as Plural from Pine Labs and PhonePe have entered this space. Also, with the zero MDR (merchant discount rate) regime on UPI and RuPay cards, merchants are spoilt for choices.

With so many options, the merchants try to get the best deal, they said.

Mathur, however, said with the kind of base that Razorpay