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The year 2021 was a mix of emotions for brands and people across the world. The markets were gaining back their momentum, industries like Travel & Hospitality, e-commerce, food delivery saw a lot of digitization and changed the way businesses operate. In short, if we could describe last year in a word, it should be – determination.
That’s exactly what defines 2021 for Cashfree Payments as well. We were determined to offer businesses the best of payments and banking infrastructure to help them grow. We wanted to explore new grounds while staying true to what we set out to do. And, looking back, we are happy about the paths we tread, and the thousands of businesses we partnered with.
Here’s a look back at the year that was 2021!
And, we got a makeover too!
Key Product Launches
A big step in a new direction – Banking-as-a-Service
With the credibility of being the leading payments solutions company in India, we took our big step into API banking in 2021 with Accounts, our very own Banking-as-a-Service solution. We partnered with major banks and neobanks to help businesses completely digitize their banking services.
Strengthening our Verification Suite with PAN Verification
PAN Verification allows merchants to do a single verification or a bulk verification of upto 10,000 PANs via API. Businesses can integrate the API with their product to streamline KYC of users, partners etc. Using this feature businesses can autome their KYC processes – view details like PAN type, name of the PAN holder, verification status, and more, of all PAN numbers verified for the given range.
New additions to our Collection Suite
Payment Gateway
At the onset of 2021, we launched Instant Settlements, our advanced Payment Gateway feature that lets merchants get access to their funds within 15 minutes of payment capture. We then followed it up with some key developments such as Easy Split, which lets marketplace merchants split incoming payments amongst the vendors after adjusting commission.
[Special initiative ] Free Payment links for Donations for #MissionOxygen
The second wave of the pandemic made things worse for the country as a result of an insufficient supply of oxygen concentrators. We at Cashfree Payments did our bit to help as many people in need as possible, with #MissionOxygen, in association with Ketto and Democratic People Foundation. As a part of this outreach, we made our no-code payment tool, Payment Links, free of cost for any NGO or service organization set out to solve the dearth of oxygen concentrators in the country.
Here is the summary of our product launches this year,
- Launched our Merchant Dashboard Android app, to help merchants be on top of their payments on the go!
- Mobile Intent flow for UPI transactions to provide a more native experience for the end customers
- Reports on SFTP servers to help merchants access their transaction data securely in their own servers on a daily basis
- Dynamic GST QR codes to help merchants adhere to the latest CBIC regulations of providing business GST information on all the B2C invoices
- Easy Split for marketplaces
- Payment Links for small business not having website
- Dynamic routing for cards (debit and credit cards) to maximize transaction success rates
- Native OTP for transactions to minimize re-directions for end customers, and thereby increasing transaction success rate
Subscriptions
2021 was a particularly important year for our Subscriptions solution with key improvements and advancements to help merchants collect recurring payments easily. Here are the important upgrades that were made to the solution,
- Introduced Mandate Porting, to facilitate merchants with seamless migration between payment solutions (for e-mandates), tech-free integration with Cashfree Payments.
- Webhook checkpoint for subscription failures – to notify customers in case of failure of eMandate creation with our webhook checkpoints. Cashfree Payments involeswill invoke a webhook whenever an e-Mandate fails for the end customers.
- First charge date for the e-Mandates – Merchants can now set the start date from which the first payment will be debited for the e-Mandates.
- Checkout links for end customers – to help merchants share the checkout URL with end-customers via SMS or email. Customers can open the link, authorize the mandate and get the subscription activated without any hassle.
- Functionality to process eNACH on all days, as per the latest RBI guidelines
- Individual utility codes – to help merchants customize all end-customer facing interfaces to reflect their business name, giving a personalized experience for the end-customer.
- SBI direct debit: scanned image parsing for Physical Mandates – merchants who have accounts in SBI can give us a scanned image of a mandate (a challan that is signed by the end customer) to authorize recurring payments. Cashfree Payments will process this mandate and subsequently process the upcoming debits.
- Subscription activation from within the merchant dashboard to help merchants facilitate payment retries and increase success rates
Auto Collect
Auto Collect turned eyes last year with a bunch of new additions to help merchants associate incoming payments with customers faster and easier. We partnered with Mumbai Metro to facilitate customers and travellers with UPI QR Code contactless checkout across 24 metro stations in Mumbai. Here are the upgrades that went into Auto Collect in 2021,
- Instant Settlements to help merchants get instant access to their payments in their bank accounts
- Webhook to automatically adjust Auto Collect settlements with disputes and chargebacks created
- Merchant self help widget – to help merchants to automatically track the status of a transaction in real time, within the merchant dashboard
- Preschedule charges for transactions via SI on cards – In compliance with RBI guidelines, Subscriptions now lets merchants pre-schedule transactions for customers upto 7 days prior to the date of debit
New additions to our Disbursals Suite
Payouts
Payouts by Cashfree Payments made news this year as the market leader in the bulk disbursals segment with more than 50% market share, processing transactions worth USD 20 billion annually at the rate of 60,000 Payouts/minute. Here are the enhancements what went into this path-breaking numbers,
- Introduced Payouts in our Merchant Dashboard mobile app to help merchants keep track of their payouts at all times
- Excel support for batch uploads – Support of .xlsx file uploads, and processing transactions in bulk including bulk verification, bulk transfer or bulk generation of Payout links
Cashgram
Cashgram, our instant payout links solution, got a new makeover in 2021 with better user experience and additional features to help merchants provide a more personalized experience. Here’s a quick glance at what went into Cashgram last year,
- Cashgram link expiry date extension – to help merchants choose the expiry date anytime between 1 to 30 days, instead of the previous 7-day period.
- Cashgram upgrade – The new Cashgram upgrade has a lot of customizations that will help merchants present their brand better and provide customers with an enhanced experience! Some major improvements included the ability to add company logo and customer support number, mention the payout type (refunds, reimbursement, rewards, etc.), and specify the payout reason for the newly created Cashgrams.
- Excel support for batch uploads – Support of .xlsx file uploads, and processing transactions in bulk including bulk verification, bulk transfer or bulk generation of Cashgram links
Entering the new year with hope, and a lot of gratitude!
As we enter the new year, we’d like to thank everyone who was by us throughout this journey, including,
Our beloved customers who trust us and make us a part of their success story.
Our banking partners who trust Cashfree Payments and our zest to improve the customer payment experience
Our strategic partners who share the same enthusiasm and drive as we do to help solve business payment challenges.
Our investors and incubators including SBI, Ycombinator, PayPal, SmileGate Investments and Apis partners.
And, our lovely Cashfree Payments family for transforming dreams into reality for a living!
Onwards and upwards!
