Sequoia-backed fintech Razorpay to integrate with ONDC

This comes at a time when ONDC’s merchant base has risen to 85,000 — from around 800 in December — after it launched an incentive scheme for seller-side apps to enroll merchants. Representative image

Razorpay, the fintech platform which mainly focuses on businesses, said it would be joining the government’s e-commerce project, the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). The Tiger Global-backed payments solution provider will launch a payment reconciliation service for several network participants, which includes buyers, sellers, and logistic providers.

The Bengaluru-based company boasts of over 10 million businesses on its platform, including small and medium enterprises, and says its history of maintaining an audit trail will likely help settle any disputes or discrepancies that arise on the network.

"The possibilities the ONDC provides are endless. I’m confident the payment reconciliation service will only further strengthen the development of ONDC’s tech infrastructure and help the ecosystem grow seamlessly from a payments and compliance point of view,” Shashank Kumar, managing director and co-founder of Razorpay, said.

Elite company

Razorpay is the second large fintech platform that has joined the ONDC in the same month. Walmart-owned PhonePe also integrated with the open network earlier this month, although with a separate app, dedicated for ONDC, named Pincode. Even Noida-based Paytm has integrated with the ONDC.

“This is a significant step towards our goal of enabling seamless and secure digital commerce for everyone. With this addition, we continue to drive transparency and inclusion in the digital commerce space…” said Thampy Koshy, CEO, ONDC.

This comes at a time when ONDC’s merchant base has risen to 85,000 — from around 800 in December — after it launched an incentive scheme for seller-side apps to enroll merchants. Of the total seller base, 31,000 are from non-mobility categories such as food, grocery, home decor, and electronics.

Established in 2014 by Kumar and Harshil Mathur, Razorpay is backed by investors like Y Combinator, GIC, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, MasterCard, and others who have collectively invested over $740 million in the company. The company was last valued at over $7 billion.