PayU partners with several businesses, from enterprises to SMEs, to accelerate their business growth. Entrepreneurs, disruptors, and innovators from all industries and sectors run these businesses.

Let’s shed some light on how India shopped in 2022. We at PayU activated our data engines and put together a report on how India shopped during the festive season of 2022 and compared them to the shopping trends of 2021. Read this blog to know how India shops!*

But before we dive deep, here are some quick highlights:

• 2022 saw a 64% increase in expenditure & 31% increase in the number of transactions vis-à-vis festive sale period in 2021
• There was a 245% increase in expenditure & 130% increase in the number of transactions between the ‘normal’ period of 2019 & post-pandemic period of 2022
• One day in September witnessed about 7 million transactions (Yes, it’s enormous!)

Read an elaborative insight summary below.

Credit Care: The ruler of this generation

Since its advent, credit cards have been a preferred mode of payment for many Indians. Even though there is 1 credit card for every 12 debit cards, credit card users spent about 5 times more than debit card users in 2022. Interestingly, a credit card user spent Rs. 6000 on average compared to a debit card user who spent Rs. 2,500 in 2022. 

Such an upsurge in credit card usage can be attributed to attractive cashback, reward points, discounts, deals & add-on services banks and brands offer. 

A quick escape is highly preferred.

The pandemic years have marked a full stop to people’s movement. While it’s true that most of us might have done a trip or two already by now, there’s still a lot of momentum in the travel industry. 

The travel and hospitality sector showed a 165% increase this festive season. Not only are Indians travelling extensively, but they are using all modes of travel. 

• Cabs showed a 121% increase in expenditure.
• Train bookings witnessed a 50% increase in expenditure & 33% increase in average ticket size.
• Airlines saw a 95% increase in average ticket size
• Holiday packages saw a 70% increase in expenditure & 341% increase in average ticket size. 

UPI is taking the lead across the board

The ease and success of UPI across the nation have enabled every nook and corner for a digital transformation. Most of our corner shops now have multiple QR right at the entrance. Of course, the usage has gone up. But our data suggest that the ticket size has decreased. 

There was a 133% rise in the number of transactions and a 124% growth in expenditure compared to 2021, while the average ticket took a hit marginally (-4%). Consumers using UPI for small ticket items such as groceries, within-city travel & entertainment could be why the average ticket size declined. 

The top 5 cities contributing to the highest number of transactions through UPI are Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Delhi NCR. Well, that’s a little obvious, isn’t it?

Sneak peek at the BFSI landscape.

With increasing financial literacy, ease of investing and a secure ecosystem across the nation, the insurance pace grew by 41%. Investments saw a 66% growth in expenditure & 50% growth in average ticket size. One of the reasons for this spike could be the increased adoption of do-it-yourself wealth management platforms – especially among millennials & post-pandemic behavioural changes. In the Banking and Insurance sector, transactions & expenditures increased by 100% and 143%, respectively.

It looks like a lot of good time lies ahead of the BFSI units, and the graph will continue to get beautiful. 

Adoption of digital entertainment services

While it’s been sometime now that Indians have embraced the world of OTT and gaming, the year 2022 has seen some record-breaking statistics. The entertainment industry witnessed an increase in both expenditure and transactions of 52% and 54%. OTT expenditure has grown by 80% & transactions by 175%; gaming expenditure shot up by 20%. 

What stood out here was the habits the tenure of the pandemic has set for all of us – OTT preference and avoiding public spaces (aka staying in the comfort of home). This is backed by our data that suggests that expenses related to physically watching movies and attending on-ground events decreased expenditure and transactions by 11% and 43%, respectively. 

Other interesting finds

While the above states the specifics of certain areas, the other insights we found are:

• Education saw a 20% growth in expenditure & 24% growth in average ticket size. There is a 14% growth in university-related expenditure but a 40% dip in spending on upskilling. More Indians are paying for education using UPI. UPI transactions for education increased by 29%, while spending through UPI on education increased by 47%
• Patna, Indore, Ernakulam, Nagpur & Ludhiana are new entrants to the top 20 cities by expenditure in 2022. Maharashtra, Karnataka & Tamil Nadu continue to be top festive spenders.  

*The report compares digital payment transaction trends on the PayU platform between the festive periods of 2022 (September 15 – October 15) and 2021 (October 1-31). 

So, what are the takeaways for businesses?

Well, the easiest of all the conclusions here is that the festive season is an excellent time for business owners to earn maximum profits by catering to the increase in consumer demand. 

While India moves to more credit-based shopping and UPI-led purchases, as a business, it’s almost mandatory to enable these options. And while you are at it, opening up other avenues to accept payments, like BNPL, EMI etc., is only an added benefit. Check out the payments suite by PayU and leap growth with your business today.

Explore PayU Payments Suite Now!

The post PayU Festive Insights Report 2022 appeared first on PayU Blog.

With the highest industry payment success rate and a wide range of payment choices, PayU provides your customers with a delightful payment experience. In addition, the PayU dashboard offers you the greatest user interface.

With a wide range of tools including analytics and real-time statistics, PayU Dashboard enables you to learn important things about the functioning of your company. To learn more about the features of the PayU dashboard, read this article.

Overview of the PayU dashboard for a payment gateway

Businesses can configure, run, and administer their payment gateway account on the PayU dashboard, along with the other products from its payment suite. A summary of recent payments, settlements, and refunds is provided. In this essay, we’ll talk specifically about a payment gateway’s dashboard. Let’s get going!

Using your PayU dashboard login, you can access the dashboard. Your company summary and quick links to all the features, including the payment link, payment gateway, payout installation, and details, are displayed on the main page.

Your PayU dashboard’s left sidebar contains four key header links for convenient access. These are: ‘Collect Payments’, ‘Track’, ‘Send Payments’ and ‘Analytics’. 

Let us see the functionality of each parameter that PayU offers:

• Collect Payments

Customers are a company’s most precious resource. By providing a simple payment process and the highest payment success rate, you can give your consumers a good experience.

• Payment Gateway

The “Payment Gateway” page enables you to add payment options to your company’s website or mobile application and turn browsers into grateful paying clients. Here, you can use Java, PHP, Python, etc. to incorporate payments into your app or website. The tab also provides you with the technical information required to activate the functionality.

Utilize the PayU SDK to integrate with mobile apps and add payment support to your iOS or Android app. Connect to the best and most widely used e-commerce sites and shopping carts. The integration procedure just needs to be done once and is simple. With its user-friendly, fully responsive and top-notch security protocols, the business can relax knowing that it will comply with current data security standards. Any urgent assistance needs will be immediately resolved thanks to the round-the-clock help.

• Payment Links

Through this feature on the PayU merchant dashboard, you may generate and distribute payment links. Credit/debit cards, wallets, net banking, UPI, and other online payment options are all available to your clients. Popular apps like Facebook, SMS, WhatsApp, email, and other chat programmes make it simple to share payment links.

• Invoices

You may develop straightforward and expert invoices for your clients so they can complete the sale and make rapid online payments. It is not necessary to utilise a different application just for billing. The channel that is most convenient for your customer might be used to share these invoices. By include precise and succinct billing information, you can create customised invoices. For a completely tax-compliant operation, an automated GST computation is already built in.

• Payment Button

From the PayU dashboard menu option, you may design the payment buttons using this tab and alter their size, colour, and type. With just one line of code copied on your website, you can immediately launch your products and provide payment alternatives thanks to the procedure’ simplicity. To install the PayU payment buttons, just adhere to these easy steps:

• Select the ‘New Payment’ button. 
• On the following page, add the button’s text name, such as “Pay,” “Card,” etc.
• Enter the Item name.
• Enter the amount for the item.
• • Choose the size and colour of the button from the menu as well as their size.

You can add the client information needed at checkout, such as name, address, and contacts, under the “Custom Details” area. Additional fields can be added here. Before the installation is complete, you can examine the buttons.

• Split Payments

This area allows you to securely split incoming funds to several accounts and handle vendor payments using simple-to-integrate APIs.

• E-commerce & Marketplaces

This tab enables you to distribute single payments among numerous sellers in accordance with the payment terms if you operate a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers on your platform.

• Online Service Aggregators

The operation of an online aggregator requires a straightforward way to control money flows to the relevant service provider. This page makes it simple to handle payment routing.

• On-Demand Services

You may control the entire payment process by monitoring the payment dates, specifics, etc. if you run a platform for service providers such as plumbers, taxi drivers, and others.

• Send Payments

You may send payouts and direct transfers of money to your partners, vendors, and workers via the PayU dashboard’s “Send Payments” option. Instant payments can be made to your bank account, phone, or email. You may easily transfer your employees’ salary in bulk each month with a simple file upload using the PayU dashboard.

Your consumers can receive direct, quick refunds into their bank accounts or credit cards. All vendor payments can be handled in bulk.

• Domestic Money Transfer (DMT)

In accordance with DMT rules, you can rapidly transfer funds to any bank account using DMT. You can also manage DMT commissions, claim 100% GST, and also claim GST Settlements.

Follow these easy steps to start DMT transfers:

• Deposit funds into your DMT account.
• Add Sender and Beneficiary Details through API
• Get Commission as well as GST Settlement
• Easily Track Your Transactions

You may monitor crucial company data like transactions and settlements in the “Track” section.

• Transaction Overview

This tab provides you with a summary of all transactions made during a time frame.

You can monitor the total number of transactions for your company’s income, refunds, and payment success rate.

The transactions are listed by date and include the transaction ID, the source, and the contacts for the customers.

To keep track of certain transactions, you can add filters. You can more conveniently keep track of all of your transactions from one page with this tabular view.

• Settlement Overview

You can view the daily record of resolved transactions in this part as a consolidated figure and a list of settled transaction details that have been filtered by date, UTR number, sales amount, etc.

The TDR Report for the current or previous months is available for download.

You can view information about any pending chargeback requests under the “chargeback” page.

• Analytics for Business Insights

You may see a single-window overview of all of your business transactions, refunds, settlements, and reimbursements on the analytics page. With straightforward, simple to filter analytics, you can keep a close eye on your business every day.

• Transactions

These reports will retrieve your transactional data, including payment, customer information, and status.

• Settlements

These reports will list settlements that have been started, paused, and processed along with information on service charges.

• Refunds

These reports will provide information on initiated refunds and their progression through the cycle.

• TDR Report

These are monthly service charges and tax invoices from PayU.

• Payouts

You can view payout information including the amount distributed, the beneficiary, as well as the status in these reports.

• Buttons

You can view transactional information in these reports, such as the total amount collected and the current state of your payment buttons.

By selecting the “Generate Report” tab, you may generate and download a report for each metric.

You can choose the fields, filters, and needed data ranges for reports. The reports are offered in XLS and CSV file formats.

Conclusion

You can compile, customise, monitor, and track all of your customers’ payments from a single window using the PayU dashboard. Make the PayU payment dashboard your business assistant to aid you in making prompt decisions based on data and statistics that are accessible with a single click. 

The post How To Use PayU Dashboard? A Quick Guide appeared first on PayU Blog.

What is Priority Settlements?

As the payment settlement process is time taking, we built a product that eases the problem of cash crunch in your business. PayU Priority Settlements enable you to get your online customer payments any time of the day in just 15 minutes. It works 24×7, supports all payment modes, and enables you to choose your settlement cycle.

Features of Priority Settlements

With Priority settlements, you get:

Round-the-Clock Settlements

Get round-the-clock payment settlement as it works 24 hours a day*, on weekends and on bank holidays

*All your settlements between 01:00 AM – 09:30 PM will be processed on the same day. Settlements between 09:30 PM – 01:00 AM will be processed in the next available batch.

Flexible Payment Settlement Cycles

Change your settlement cycle from T+15 minutes to T+1 day, as and when needed. Maintain cash flow in your business when required.

On-Demand Transfers

Transfer the preferred amount instantly when required to use it for your business operations. Get money on demand without worrying about payables & receivables.

Easy to Use

Activate priority settlements with a single click from your PayU dashboard. Ease the process of maintaining cash flow for your business.

Complete Clarity

View all your settlement charges on your PayU dashboard. Get complete clarity on all your receivables & payables right on your dashboard.

No Limits

Get settlements unlimited times in a day. Manage the financial needs of your business on the go without worrying about the cash flow crunch.

Benefits of Using Priority Settlements

Priority settlements by PayU enable:

Timely Payments

Make all the payments to your partners, vendors, and agents on time without giving second thoughts about your cash flow.

Consistent Cash Flow

Meet all your working capital expenses hassle-free without worrying about getting all your receivables on time.

Instant Refunds

Refund money instantly to your customers during large-scale cancellations easily and keep your customers happy.

How to Activate Priority Settlements for Your Business?

Here’s how you can activate priority settlements for your business:

Step 1: Open your PayU Dashboard and click on “Activate Now”.

Step 2: Choose your settlement cycle. 

Step 3: Once activated, you can see settled transactions on Priority settlements and filter as per your need. Click on any transaction to view the break-up of charges.

The post Benefits & Features of Priority Settlements that You Should Know! appeared first on PayU Blog.

What is Priority Settlements?

Priority Settlements is a PayU product that solves the cash flow problems of your business. Get your online customer payments instantly & run your business 24×7.

Why Do You Need It?

As the payment settlement process takes time, it’s difficult to receive your online collections instantly. Here are a few problems that PayU Priority Settlement mainly solves for your business while reducing the payment settlement time:

• Making timely payments
• Needing cashflow to meet capital expenses
• Providing instant refunds to your customers

How Does it Work?

Once a customer pays you, the money is deducted from their account instantly. Money moves from your customer’s bank to your bank via the payment gateway. With PayU Priority Settlements, these customer payments come to your bank account in just 15 minutes.

Know more about priority settlements in this video.

The post Boost Cash Flow for Your Business with Priority Settlements by PayU! appeared first on PayU Blog.

A generic payment settlement cycle can be time taking but having a payment partner that can help you settle your customer payments quickly is a boon. Priority Settlements from PayU offers a comprehensive solution, transparency & flexibility for your business. It enables you to run your business 24×7 and keeps you from facing a cash crunch. Let’s understand what makes it better than normal settlements.

How is PayU Priority Settlement Different Than Normal Settlements?

Maintaining a healthy cash flow is very important in running any business. Often you can feel bogged down by delayed settlements on bank holidays and weekends. These features of priority settlements will help you maintain a healthy cash flow: 

Amazing right? Having a product that enables you to save time and ensures you don’t get into a cash crunch is always a good choice. Click here to know more benefits of using PayU Priority Settlements. 

Frequently Asked Questions

The post Is PayU Priority Settlement the Right Choice for Your Business? appeared first on PayU Blog.

1. Keep the business concept simple
2. The idea behind becoming an entrepreneur must have been the first thing that got you into the business.
3. Businesses that conceive the best entrepreneur ideas and keep them simple are often successful. It is worth remembering that simple business ideas must remain understandable for the lower management, the salesperson, the marketing agency, and the customer.
4. Focus on both – the market and the product
5. As first entrepreneurs, while you have looked for simple, effective, and the best business ideas – is the market ready for it? Does your product offer something unique or solve a problem? What about funds, operational costs, competition, and so on?
6. Adequate market research can give you an insight into the product’s viability, and your well-chosen advisors can add significant value to it.

Pick the Right People

It is naïve to think that you can start your business alone. Choose your core competency and concentrate on getting the process around it right. For instance, if you are a finance person, bring in operations, logistics, and marketing experts to assist you. Also important is having a good team around you. Your mentors will be your eyes and ears, but your wider team will ensure that your cavalry is ready to sell the product when you kickstart production.

Develop a Financial Model

An efficient financial model will also project future incomes accurately and budget with fewer deviations. These days, most businesses seek assisted payment platforms as a part of their financial model.

A new business can reach out to a local and a global market base with PayU. It will help you reach out to the Tier-II and Tier-III customer base with the incorporation of Hindi and other Indian regional languages on the PayU platform.

Keep Emergency Funds Aside

If there is one thing that the pandemic taught small businesses, it was the importance of a contingency fund. Small and new businesses mostly run on shoestring budgets. However, every entrepreneur needs to know that an emergency fund should be created along the way.

Networking

The best business framework can bootstrap its way to stability. But for the quantum leap, investments are the key. Successful entrepreneurs find time to connect with the right people, and so should a first-time entrepreneur. Strong networking skills can result in lucrative deals, collaborations, and, most importantly, investors.

Staying True to the Commitment

Businesses and products are often accused of not being what they used to be. Stay true to the entrepreneur’s business ideas that made it well-accepted in the first place. Once your business idea clicks, the focus should be on maintaining consistency in service or product delivery.

Conclusion

Steps like those mentioned above need to be the guiding beacon for businesses as they start. With these things taken care of, new business entrepreneurship can always be well-placed to take on the challenges as they come.

Wondering what else can PayU help you with? Check out this video to get a glimpse of the opportunities that PayU offers to expand and streamline your business:

Frequently Asked Questions

The post 7 Simple Ways to Start a New Business appeared first on PayU Blog.

Today, PayU enables 4.5 lakh+ businesses with payment solutions customized to their unique business needs. Netflix, Cred, OLA, Goibibo.com, Redbus, Airbnb, BookMyShow are some of the domain leaders that partner with PayU for their payment solutions. Let us explore the PayU merchant dashboard in detail to assist you in setting up and managing seamless payment options for your customers.

The Dashboard

You can access the dashboard with your PayU dashboard login. On the main page, you will view your business summary with quick links to all the features like payment link, payment gateway, payout installation, and details.  

On the left sidebar of your PayU dashboard, you will find four main header links for quick access. These are: ‘Track’, ‘Collect Payments’, ‘Send Payments’ and ‘Analytics’. Let us see the functionality of each one. 

Collect Payments

For a business, customers are the most valuable asset. Offer a happy experience to your customers with a smooth payment experience and the best payment success rate.

Payment Gateway

‘Payment Gateway’ tab helps you to install payment options onto your business portal or app, and convert visitors into happy paying customers. Here, you can integrate payments in your app or website using java, PHP, Python, etc. The tab further gives you the necessary technical documentation to enable the functionality.

Integrate with Mobile App and accept payments in your Android or iOS app using PayU’s SDK. Integrate with the most popular and best e-commerce platforms and shopping carts. The integration process is one-time and straightforward. Its user-friendly, responsive design combined with best-in-class security protocols ensures compliance with current data security norms and peace of mind for the business. The 24×7 Support ensures immediate resolution for any urgent support requirements.

Payment Links

You can create and share payment links through this option on the PayU merchant dashboard. Your customers can pay using any online payment method, credit/debit card, net banking, UPI, or wallets. Payment links can be easily shared through popular apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, SMS, email, and other chat applications.

Invoices

You can create simple and professional invoices for your customers so that they can make prompt online payments and the sale closure. There is no need to use a separate application for invoicing. These invoices can be shared through a channel most convenient to your customer. You can create customized invoices by adding clear and concise billing details. An automated GST calculation is inbuilt for a 100% tax compliant process.

Payment Button

Using this tab, you can design the payment buttons and customize the size, colour, and button type from this PayU dashboard menu option. The ease of the process helps you launch your products quickly with a single line of code copy-pasted on your site and offer payment options. Follow these simple steps to install PayU payment buttons:

Click on the ‘New Payment’ button. On the next page:

• Add the text name for the button e.g. ‘Pay’, ‘Card’ etc.
• Fill in the Item name.
• Fill in the amount for the item.
• Select the colour of the button from the menu and select the size.

The ‘Custom Details’ section allows you to add customer details required at checkout, e.g. name, address, contacts as per your requirement. You can add more fields here. You can preview the buttons before the final installation.

Split Payments

With this tab, you can split incoming payments to individual accounts securely and manage vendor payments with easy-to-integrate APIs.

E-commerce & Marketplaces

If you run a marketplace that brings buyers and sellers together on your platform, this tab helps you divide single payments amongst multiple sellers as per the payments terms.

Online Service Aggregators

An online aggregator’s business requires a simple mechanism to manage payment flows to the respective service provider. You can manage the routing of payments easily with this tab.

On-Demand Services

If you run a platform for service providers like taxi drivers, plumbers, etc., you can manage the entire payment process by supervising the payment dates, details, etc.

Send Payments

The ‘Send Payments’ section on PayU dashboard helps you to send payouts and direct money transfers to your partners, vendors, and employees. You can send payments to your phone/Email/bank account within seconds. With the PayU dashboard, you can quickly transfer your employee salaries in bulk every month with a single file upload. 

You can directly transfer immediate refunds to your customers into their bank accounts or credit cards.​ You can process all vendor payments in bulk.​

Domestic Money Transfer (DMT)

With DMT, you can instantly transfer money to any bank account, in line with DMT regulations, claim GST Settlements, manage DMT commissions and claim 100% GST.

To initiate DMT transfers, follow these simple steps:

• Add money to your DMT account​
• Add Sender and Beneficiary Details via API
• Get Commission and GST Settlement

Track Your Transactions

The ‘Track’ section enables you to track the essential business metrics like transactions and settlements:

Transaction Overview

• This tab gives you a snapshot of all transactions done in a period.
• You can track the revenue, refunds, and payment success rate for total transactions for your business.
• The transactions are listed date-wise, with the transaction ID, source and customer’s contacts.
• You can apply filters to track particular transactions. This tabulated view makes it easier for you to keep track of all your transactions from a single page.

Settlement Overview

This section shows you the daily record of settled transactions as a consolidated figure and lists details of every settled transaction filtered for a date, UTR no, sales amount, etc.

• You can download the monthly TDR Report for current or past months.
• The ‘chargeback’ tab gives you details of any outstanding chargeback requests.

Analytics for Business Insights

The analytics page shows you a single-window overview of your business transactions, refunds, and settlements. You can keep a sharp eye on your business every day with simple, easy to filter analytics.

Transactions

These reports will fetch your data for your transactions like payment, customer info, status.

Settlements

These reports will show you settlements initiated, paused, and processed with details like service fees.

Refunds

These reports will fetch you details of refunds initiated and their statuses through the cycle.

TDR Report

These are monthly invoices from PayU for service fees and tax.

Payouts

These reports will show you payouts data like amount disbursed, beneficiary and status.

Buttons

• These reports will show you transactional data like the amount collected and the status of your payment buttons.
• For each metric, you can generate and download a report by clicking on the ‘Generate Report’ tab.
• You can select the date range for reports, filters on data required, and fields. The reports are available in CSV and XLS formats.

Conclusion

PayU dashboard is a one-stop solution for you to assemble, customize, manage and track all your customer payments from a single window. Make the PayU dashboard your business assistant to help you make quick decisions based on data and reports available at a click. To know more about the PayU dashboard, click here.

The post PayU Dashboard: All You Need to Know appeared first on PayU Blog.

What is Neobank? 

The financial services industry is focusing on customer experience and satisfaction; a gap has developed from what the traditional banks offer to what customers expect. And, neobanks are attempting to fill that gap. A neobank is banking on a fingertip through its zero presence on the ground & a complete digital offering. 

It offers a fully digital banking solution at a discounted cost due to the considerable savings in operating costs. This is attributed to zero physical branches & no spending on the workforce to man those branches. Some of the services include international payments, money transfers, or lending credit. Some new banks also partner with neobank to offer the services that help them provide both online & offline banking services. 

Why Neobank? 

India has over 2000 fintech firms in the country. With the government wanting Indians to embrace a completely cashless economy, Fintechs have played a significant role in fulfilling this vision. 

Also, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for contactless banking was felt by the people more than ever before. People moved away from traditional banking & physical cash with more & more interest in online banking & wallets. 

The invention of UPI pushed this adoption, which facilitated transactions irrespective of value size. In 2020, India already has clocked more annual transactions in terms of volume than that of China & the US combined totaling $25.5bn.  

Neobank Vs Traditional/Digital Banks

Neobanks are new entrants into the banking industry. They are also known as fintech companies or financial technology companies. A simple example of how they differ from traditional banks is neobanks do not charge any fees for opening an account. Ideally, traditional banks charge a monthly fee for maintaining a budget. 

The government regulates traditional banks. On the other hand, neobanks either have no partial or complete banking license regulated by the government.  

Digital banks offer a fully digital banking experience, mainly through their e-banking platforms. They are similar to neobanks in some ways, but there are differences too. For example, digital banks charge a monthly fee to maintain an account. 

Benefits of a Neobank to Customers? 

• Low cost: Products as simple as savings accounts are available at no charge due to the bank’s complete digital presence & low regulatory hurdle. 

• Higher interest rate: The low-cost structures of neobanks help offer lucrative fixed deposits at an attractive interest rate as the entire experience is digital. 
• Convenience: UI/UX lies at the heart of a neobank, attracting customers to adopt it quickly. Also, due to state of the art IT systems & security features, it is easy to predict any fraudulent activity and stop it at the right time. 
• Reduction in processing time: Imagine applying for a loan & it getting processed within minutes & not days. Neobanks bring with it the ability to reduce processing times, which otherwise would take days & manual underwriting by bank personnel. 

Tips to Choose a Neobank

Neobanks may offer a great deal of convenience due to its complete digital presence. However, the fact remains that they are partially or fully unregulated in terms of their offerings by RBI currently. Hence, it is essential to choose one based on its management expertise in managing risk related to banking & finance. 

Five key points to keep in mind before choosing the right neobank:  

1. Know your banking needs – The kind of banking partner one needs depends on how complex the individual’s banking need is. Today, most digital banking apps offer the same set of functionalities that a neobank provides, so it is good to know what your bank offers before signing up for a neobank. 

2. Insurance – Banking is a business of trust & the government, with its regulation, offers to protect the depositors from default through an insurance program. This insurance program ensures that the insurer pays depositors in case the bank defaults on the deposit repayment. The same rules do not govern neobanks. The best way to work with neobanks is to ascertain if they offer a private deposit insurance scheme to protect the depositor. 

3. You are comfortable with technology – Neobanks work best for tech-savvy folks and want banking at their fingertips. Neobank apps are minimal, with a clean & straightforward UI design. 

4. You want to get better at money management – In a world that thrives on making you spend more & more money. Neobanks, with their ease of use, can significantly help you design a reward & a goal-based system. Such programs can lead you to invest wisely & track all your unwanted expenses simply because money saved is money earned.
5. Account management & reconciliation – If you are a business or an entrepreneur, you may need more than one system to manage your finances. Neobanks can combine all of it into one & offer business insights through its reports that can save time in decision-making. 

The Way Forward 

Low-cost internet & a tech-savvy young population is creating massive drifts in the way banking is perceived. Some of the notable trends soon with regard to this new-age banking can be seen from 

• Focus on national markets by emerging fintech startups that offer unparalleled services in several regions of India & are making an impact by driving financial inclusion for the masses. 
• Neobanks gradually transform into full-fledged banking institutions by offering various services, from account opening to travel credit card sales. 
• Neobanks are going into messengers; slowly, customers will manage their accounts and cards without installing the bank’s app but from their preferred messaging service. Many popular neobanks partner with social media companies like Facebook & Google to offer world-class customer support through their apps. 

The post The Exponential Rise of NeoBanks In India appeared first on PayU Blog.

In 2016, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) developed and introduced a real-time digital payments system under the Digital India campaign. Named the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), it’s an online payment system that instantly transfers the funds between two bank accounts in real-time. It serves as a faceless & cardless payments service. 

Within just the first 37 months of its launch in 2016, this mobile-only payment system helped transact a total of ₹17.29 lakh crore (US$ 230 billion) in India. In fact, in 2020, India became the world’s largest real-time payment market with 25.5 billion annual transactions, leaving China and the United States behind. 

This popularity can be attributed to the simple interface and seamless transactions of UPI applications, which makes this digital payments platform easy to use for everyone. With features such as instant cashback, referral bonuses, lucky draws, and other lucrative rewards on transactions, more & more people are shifting to UPI payments instead of using cash or cards. 

So, if you feel like you have been missing out on the benefits of UPI payments, scroll down and find out how you can avail these benefits and more by creating your UPI ID. 

But first, 

What Is A UPI ID or UPI Payments ID? 

It is an online payment system that enables you to virtually transfer money from one bank to another. An Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS). 

Traditionally, if you transfer money through a bank, you will need details such as the bank name, bank account number, branch address, and IFSC of the beneficiary. These details will have to be entered every time you want to transfer money. A UPI ID or a virtual payment address (VPA) eliminates this hassle.  

As the name suggests, your virtual payment address is a unique ID that enables you to send or receive money through UPI from/to your bank account without sharing each other’s account numbers or other details. 

Linked with a UPI-enabled Bank, your UPI ID can be created on any UPI payment application like BHIM and others. 

How To Create Your UPI Payments ID or VPA? 

There are many Unified Payments Interface payments apps available in the market. However, the steps to create your UPI ID are almost the same across all these apps. Irrespective of which app you use, you will first have to register your bank on the app to create your UPI ID. You can do this through the following steps: 

1. Download your desired UPI digital payments app, which will prompt you to set a four-digit app code upon opening. 

2. After this, the app will ask you to verify your mobile number. If you have a dual sim, select the number which is registered with your bank. The app will then verify this number on its own through an OTP. 

3. After this verification, the app will ask you to select your bank and will automatically receive the required details such as bank name, the IFSC code, and account number. If you have more than one account added to the same mobile number, you can select your desired account. 

4. Finally, the app will display your UPI ID. 

5. And voila! You have successfully created your UPI ID or VPA! 

Registering for UPI ID through the *99# service

Alternatively, you can also register for a UPI ID through the *99# service. Here’s how: 

1. Dial ”*99#” on your phone and select your preferred language.  
2. Enter your bank’s name or the first four digits of your IFSC code. 
3. Choose your bank account and enter the last six digits and the expiry date of your debit card. 
4. Enter and set your UPI pin or MPin. 
5. Confirm your UPI pin or MPin, and there you go. You have your UPI ID! 

How To Locate Your UPI Payments ID In A Bank Application? 

You can find your UPI ID or VPA within your UPI app. 

We have discussed two of the most commonly used apps. The process for all the apps might be almost similar with little to no differences. 

For Google Pay Users:  

1. Open the Google Pay app and click on your photo in the top right corner.  
2. Click on Bank Account.  
3. Select the bank account linked with the UPI ID. 
4. You will find the associated UPI ID under the name “UPI IDs” with its QR Code. 

For BHIM App Users: 

1. Log in with your app password. 
2. Click on “Profile” from the drop-down menu. You’ll find your UPI ID with your QR Code

How Can You Change Your UPI Payments ID? 

If you are not satisfied with your UPI address, you have the option of changing it. Here’s how: 

For BHIM App Users: 

1. Open the BHIM app and go to your profile.  
2. Click on Settings. 
3. You will see the option to edit your UPI ID. 
4. After making the necessary changes to your ID, click Confirm. 

For Google Pay Users: 

1. Go to Google Pay and click on your profile photo.  
2. Click on “Bank accounts” in “Payment Methods” and select the bank account whose UPI ID you want to edit. 
3. Tap the UPI ID associated with your favoured bank account and click on Manage UPI IDs. 
4. Click ‘+’ icon next to the UPI ID you’d like to have. 

Why Should You Use UPI Payments & Its Benefits

Here are some features of UPI payments that make them one of the best payment options available today: 

• Single click payment. 
• Instant money transfer through any mobile device 24×7 for all 365 days. 
• No minimum transaction limit. 
• No transaction charges. 
• One mobile application for managing various bank accounts. 
• No need to enter multiple bank details for transactions. 
• Resolve complaints and queries through the mobile app. 
• Option to share the receipt of transactions and bills. 
• Enhanced reliability & security since the RBI regulates it. 
• Attractive rewards on transactions on selected apps*. 

Conclusion 

Today, the UPI payments system is leading the non-cash systems in India ahead of net banking and debit & credit cards. These are being used by individuals, merchants, retailers, and manufacturers across the country. In fact, as of May 2021, the platform has 100 million monthly active users in India. 

With this digital payments revolution, businesses are finding it much more convenient to send and accept payments in real-time, saving them the hassle of going to banks or making cash payments while also making the process easier for their customers. 

With 100+ payment options available on PayU, including UPIs, cards, wallets, net banking, Buy Now-Pay Later(BNPL) systems, let your customers choose from multiple payment options, anywhere, anytime! 

The post Join The Payment Revolution- Create and Use Your UPI Payments ID appeared first on PayU Blog.

Among the plethora of frauds plaguing us, we have often forgotten that merchant fraud remains one of the major pain points and is costing e-commerce vendors some severe financial loss. 

Merchant fraud detection has not found the traction they deserve because they are hard to detect. In addition, details about them are often lost in the complexities of digital payments. As a result, while much work has ensured merchant fraud prevention and detection, the results are far from acceptable. 

This article discusses the types of merchant fraud and some tips that you may find handy. 

What are Merchant Frauds? 

The year 2020 saw a staggering 220% increase in merchant frauds and phishing compared to the last year. 

Before we discuss what merchant fraud is, you must understand how a card-based digital payment works: 

A credit card or a debit card payment cannot be processed without a merchant account. As soon as the customer places an order, the payment processor checks if they have a sufficient balance in their account and authorizes the transactions if they meet all the conditions. They then shift the funds from the issuing bank to the merchant account. Once the e-commerce vendor confirms the order, the amount is transferred to the seller after some days. 

So, What Leads To Merchant Frauds? 

Also referred to as fake merchant frauds, most such transactions do not involve actual merchants. Instead, the merchant account is illegally managed and operated by criminals or fraudsters. These accounts process credit card transactions to steal credit card holders’ data and then use it to make fraudulent purchases. 

Merchant Vs. Transaction Fraud 

While merchant fraud also involves transaction fraud, these two are different. Transaction fraud happens at the user-end and comprises unauthorized transactions, chargebacks, and more. Here, the fraudster employs phishing or uses data from a leaked database to generate financial details required for carrying out transaction fraud. 

In contrast, merchant fraud occurs when the fraudster becomes an imposter and uses measures beyond the end-user’s essential due diligence. These are done to dupe the authorities or individuals carrying out the transaction.

Types Of Merchant Frauds 

Merchant frauds come in several types and forms, and here are the most popular ones you are likely to come across:

Bust-out fraud 

Bust-out fraud refers to circumstances where merchant accounts are opened to dupe buyers and not for carrying out a legitimate business. Most of these accounts are short-term, and the fraudster carries out a bunch of transactions and then abandons the account without repayment. 

Transaction Laundering Or Factoring 

Several high-risk ventures require payment through secure merchant processing. It entails lower costs and far less risk of running under the government scanner. So, the fraudster uses the merchant partner details to carry out transactions across shadow sites without them knowing the same. Such transactions are even difficult to track given the multitude of other transactions the merchant processes every day.  

Identity Swap 

Here, the criminal uses the merchant account to launch a legitimate online store and uses it to bypass AML (Anti-Money Laundering) rules. They use it as a cover to carry on shady transactions and solicit funds. As the name suggests, the criminal takes over someone else’s account and makes the requisite transactions under their name. 

Business Remodeling 

In these cases, the fraudster establishes a low-risk merchant category business to avoid prying eyes and acquirer scrutiny. Once the KYC is complete, and the account is set up, the fraudsters remodel their business and start selling items of their choice. It is one of the easiest types of merchant fraud to carry out. 

Tips For Managing Merchant Fraud Risk 

With merchant fraud risk looming large, you must take the requisite steps to ensure merchant fraud detection and prevention timely. Here are some tips that would help you prevent yourself from falling into the trap: 

• When you collect sensitive data about customers, such as their payment card numbers, bank account details, identification, and names, ask how you want to keep it to ensure optimum security. 
• In addition, make sure you scrutinize who has access to the data and if they require the same. 
• Unless the data is crucial for your business, make sure you do not store it on the server redundantly. Merchant fraud prevention can be easier if you destroy sensitive data from locations accessible to hackers. 
• Use tokenization instead of attaching loyalty programs to each customer’s card numbers wherever possible. It would enable you to manage your reward program without storing critical customer information seamlessly. 

• Have a stringent periodic check to understand who and why an employee has access to your payment servers 
• If you are using remote access, ensure that it is secure to prevent unwanted access. 
• If you are dealing with a third-party integrator or reseller, make sure they are PA-DSS compliant. 

Conclusion 

Having a merchant account is a massive responsibility. So, you must undertake optimum due diligence and ensure that the sensitive data you store is safe from unwanted access. Moreover, with losses from merchant fraud risks increasing every passing year, you must set up a robust security system and take advantage of BIG data to filter fraudsters and minimize the chances of scams.  

Ultimately, to avoid merchant fraud, the best way to go about this is by opting for a secure payment gateway for your e-commerce website. With PayU’s additional security and many other features, fraudulent activities are not for you to worry about.  

The post Types Of Merchant Frauds And Ways To Tackle It appeared first on PayU Blog.