Primarily business-oriented fintech platform Razorpay said it would join the government’s e-commerce project, the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). The payment solutions provider backed by Tiger Global will roll out payment reconciliation services for multiple network participants, including buyers, sellers and logistics providers.
The Bengaluru-based company counts more than 10 million businesses on its platform, including small and medium-sized businesses, and says its history of maintaining an audit trail may help resolve any disputes or discrepancies that arise on the network.
“The possibilities that ONDC offers are endless. I believe payment reconciliation services will only further strengthen the development of ONDC’s technical infrastructure and help the ecosystem grow seamlessly from a payments and compliance perspective,” Shashank Kumar, Managing Director and Co-founder of Razorpay, said.
Razorpay is the second large fintech platform to join ONDC in the same month. Earlier this month, Walmart-owned PhonePe integrated with the open network, though with a separate app for ONDC called Pincode. Even Noida-based Paytm has integrated with ONDC.
“This is an important step towards our goal of enabling seamless and secure digital commerce for everyone. With this addition, we will continue to drive transparency and inclusion in the digital commerce space,” ONDC CEO Thampy Koshy said.
This comes as ONDC’s merchant base increased to 85,000 from about 800 last December after it launched an incentive program for seller app registered merchants. Of the total seller base, 31,000 were from non-mobile categories like food, groceries, home improvement, and electronics.
Founded in 2014 by Kumar and Harshil Mathur, Razorpay is backed by investors including Y Combinator, GIC, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, MasterCard and more, who collectively invested more than $740 million in the company. The company was last valued at more than $7 billion.