Fintech firm Razorpay will not hesitate to pull out of partnerships if it erodes the brand, said Harshil Mathur, co-founder and CEO. He added that companies can work together only if it helps them grow.
“Partnership has to be based on the ability to cross-share and grow business. When that shape changes, then sometimes companies have to do what is right for their customers. It is less about competition or money,” Mathur said, speaking exclusively with Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the Davos World Economic Forum summit.
Early this week, Razorpay and Cashfree announced their decision to cut ties with third-party payment orchestration platforms (POP), including Juspay. Merchants use POP software for their checkout page to connect with payment gateway firms, which facilitates the cash flow.
“It is not something that has happened suddenly but has been going on as a challenge for almost a year or so. I think we work with almost every player in the ecosystem and a lot of us work with every player in the ecosystem,” Mathur said.
His comments come in the wake of Juspay founders urging the payments industry to continue working on open systems and interoperability and to create value for merchants and the ecosystem.
“It is more about the brand. And if a partnership erodes our brand, then we'll take the call that makes sense,” Mathur said.
To be sure, the PG firms do not directly with Juspay, but connect to the company’s software while working with merchants. Juspay’s partnership is with the merchants.
Juspay is the largest POP player and works with most large merchants in the country. Late last year, PhonePe also said that it is ending its pact with Juspay, stopping third-party integrations for merchant payments.
Expanding international presence
Over the last couple of years, Razorpay has been expanding overseas and is looking to partner with fintech giant Stripe for cross-border business and met with officials from the company at Davos.
“There is a lot of opportunity to collaborate, at least on the cross-border pieces as we scale that business. We are trying to work with global payment players, including Stripe, JP Morgan Chase and others to see how can we collaborate to increase our cross-border penetration,” Mathur said.
Razorpay is a fairly large business in Malaysia and is planning to launch in Singapore this year. The company is exploring the Indonesian market. It already has a sizeable presence in the UAE and a few countries in South East Asia.
“We are meeting the largest players in each of these markets and see what can we do with them. At least in South East Asia, I feel there's a lot that Indian fintech companies can do. A lot of these countries are trying to replicate India's digital financial journey. And that is an opportunity for companies like ours, who have played that role in India, to play a similar role in these markets,” Mathur said.
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