Razorpay Acquires Ezetap To Expand Offline Payments

Razropay has acquired offline transaction firm Ezetap in a bid to grow its presence in the physical payments space.

The acquisition will aid Razorpay to develop a full-stacked omnichannel presence in India, the payment gateway platform said in a statement on Thursday. “This partnership with Ezetap will empower Razorpay to become India’s largest omnichannel payments solution for all businesses.”

The transaction value was not disclosed.

Ezetap serves banks -- including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank -- and merchants such as Amazon and BigBasket across more than 5 lakh touchpoints. It has achieved an annual run rate of $10 billion in gross transaction value terms.

The entire Ezetap team of around 300 employees will join Razorpay, and work as an independent business unit. In March, Razorpay had acquired IZealiant Technologies, a fintech startup that provides payment technology solutions for banks. It has also acquired Malaysia-based Curlec, TERA Finlabs, Opfin and fraud analytics platform Thirdwatch.

Razorpay received an in-principle approval for a payment aggregator licence from the Reserve Bank of India last month.

While payment gateways facilitate an online transaction by providing the technological infrastructure, they do not get into settlement of funds.

Payment aggregators onboard merchants and link them to acquiring banks. In this, aggregators receive customer payments, pool them and transfer these funds to the merchant after a time lag. This allows aggregators to earn a float income, as they are in control of the funds for a short period of time.