Razorpay Raises $9M To Revamp Payments In India

A financial startup is drawing a lot of support in India.

Razorpay, a gateway that validates online payments via credit or debit cards, banking sites and digital wallets from end consumers in real time, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding round led by Tiger Global and joined by Matrix Partners, The Economic Times reports.

In announcing the round, Razorpay — which was cofounded by Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur, incubated at the Y Combinator accelerator and now has a 15-person team in Bengaluru — also disclosed that it had previously raised seed funding from Matrix Partners, Y Combinator and 33 other angel investors, which the Economic Times story notes includes Ram Shriram (an early investor in Google); Jeff Huber, senior vice president at GoogleX; and Justin Kan, a partner at Y Combinator.

Of his online payments gateway, Kumar is quoted by The Economic Times as saying, “Our patented technology will greatly help in achieving higher transaction success rates and faster checkout time, especially on mobile devices.”

Mathur, who is also the CEO of Razorpay, has stated that the gateway’s ability to support payments at 2G speeds (among other benefits) has led merchants to a 30 percent increase in their success rates. According to Mathur (via The Economic Times), his company’s solution is the only one in India that does not redirect the customer away from the merchant’s website to complete payment.

The Economic Times story additionally reports that, as of March, more than 1,800 merchants had used the Razorpay platform, a number that the company plans to grow past 5,000 by the end of the year.

“Razorpay is revolutionizing the Indian payments space,” Punit Soni, chief product officer at Flipkart, is quoted as saying. “Their focus on easy onboarding, swift integrations and high success rates makes them the first choice for new age businesses.”

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