Singapore-based business-to-business (B2B) payable management startup Volopay has partnered with State Bank of Mauritius India to offer corporate Visa and RuPay credit cards as it expands its offerings in the Indian market.
The card is an extension of its current offerings in the Indian market helping small and medium businesses to manage their expenses and automate their accounts on the platform. Besides India, Volopay already has a presence in Australia and Singapore and is foraying into Indonesia and the Philippines.
In Australia, the Y Combinator-backed startup is offering cards with Airwallex and ANZ Bank, in Singapore it has partnered with NIUM Pte Ltd.
Under the partnership, SBM Bank India will provide the issuance of licensed Visa and Rupay credit cards and Volopay will act as the originator, distributor, and servicing agent of the bank.
In an interview with Moneycontrol post the announcement, Volopay founding member Rohit Bhageria said, "We will go live with the offering next month. We already have 700 businesses on our waitlist. Our goal is to onboard 7,000 businesses in the next 12-18 months."
As compared to Australia, the company expects the customer acquisition cost to be lower in India.
"In Australia our Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) comes to around US $2,000. In India we are estimating the CAC to be around US $600-700," Bhageria said.
The announcement comes at a time when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has limited the role of co-branding partners to only marketing and distributing these cards and has disallowed them from storing any transaction data. The move came as a deterrent for consumer card players like Slice, Uni, PayU's LazyPay, Jupiter, Fi and credit card offerings by OneCard, KredX among others as transaction data helps these platforms offer cashback and rewards.
According to industry sources, these companies are working on creating a technology service provider (TSP) entity, separate from the co-branding entity ahead of the July 1 deadline for these norms.
Bhageria believes this norm will only impact co-branding partnerships with other brands such as Zomato, Amazon etc that may not be TSP partners to banks.
"The interpretation is very simple. If you see the norms globally, we are not just a pure-play co-branding entity, we are also a TSP to our banking partner as well as to the bank," he said.
The company is not impacted by RBI's recent clarification that said lending through prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) like prepaid cards and wallets as this is a pure-play credit card offering.
Recently, Volopay also partnered with Visa for their Fintech Fast Track Program to offer financial management solutions in the Asia-Pacific region.
In May this year, the company appointed former Citibank executive Nirvikar Jain as the Global Business Officer to strengthen its leadership team.
Besides Citibank, Jain also worked with First Abu Dhabi Bank as its India CEO, and Bank of America besides holding key executive roles with tech startups.
In India, Volopay competes with players like EnKash, Karbon and Kodo which help businesses manage spends and extend corporate credit cards in partnerships with banks.
Volopay raised $29 million as part of its Series A round in March this year from the Winklevoss twins - Cameron and Tyler along with a global decacorn among others to enter the Indian market.
The round included participation from JAM Fund, Winklevoss Capital Management, Accial Capital, Rapyd Ventures, fintech veterans Jeffrey Cruttenden - CEO of Acorns, Sweta Rau - Founder of White Ventures, Amrish Rau - CEO of Pine Labs and Jitendra Gupta - Founder & CEO of Jupiter, along with Antler Global and VentureSouq.
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