PayMate Is Shortly Launching in UAE, Followed By GCC

With the government focusing more on digital payments, its market in India is expected to become a $1-trillion market by 2023 but the scope for digital adoption is a chasm to cross as India remains a largely cash-driven economy Ajay Adiseshann, Founder and CEO, PayMate told Aparajita Gupta in an interview.

How do you plan to transform B2B payments in India?

The digital payments market in India is expected to become a $1-trillion market by 2023 but the scope for digital adoption is a chasm to cross as India remains a largely cash-driven economy. Aided by government policies and this rapidly evolving fintech space, we have been able to introduce innovations to help enterprise firms and SMEs into digital payments transition.

We do this through our proprietary cloud-based platform that helps digitise their supply chain, by optimising payments from procure to pay in various B2B ecosystems. Our platform gives access to scheduled payments, invoicing, workflows, vendor and reseller boarding and e-KYC and accounting integration, migrating the entire finance process into the digital realm. We also make it easy for businesses to access working capital. 

What is the annual transaction that takes place on your platform?

Currently, our annualised processing volumes stand at $5 billion with a projected growth of $8 -$10 billion by next year, across regions.

How many companies are registered with you? What is your customer acquisition strategy for this year?

Today, we have 40,000 businesses on our platform across various supply chains. Our customer acquisition strategy revolves around adding more large and medium enterprise who in turn are connected to SME suppliers and buyers. We are shortly launching in the UAE and subsequently across GCC before moving to other regions in the CEMEA. Our customer acquisition strategy will remain the same of working with Visa issuing banks as channel partners for customer acquisition aside from direct acquisitions.

Please explain about your tie-up with Visa. Are you planning any more such tie-ups?

PayMate has worked closely with Visa and multiple banks in India to enable businesses with digital payments, faster access to credit, and more efficient ways to manage cash flow.  In March 2019, PayMate announced its expansion into the Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region in partnership with Visa. Through this partnership, Visa’s commercial financial institution clients will extend PayMate’s platform to their corporate and small business customers, giving these customers the ability to make faster payments using Visa commercial cards.

Going forward how do you plan to leverage technology further?

Technology can be a great tool to create a level playing field in supply chains globally between enterprise and SME. So far opaque payments systems have always provided an unfair advantage to enterprises. We will aggressively invest in technology to benefit both enterprise and SME for healthier supply chains.