In today’s fast-paced and technologically driven world, digitisation of business operations has a major role to play in its success. It has become important for the businesses to establish a strong digital footprint and remain competitive in the modern marketplace.
The Global Fintech Fest 2023 had a panel discussion on ‘Merchant acquiring and the $100 billion opportunity in small business’. The leaders who were included in the discussion were Rishi Chhabra, Head- Merchant Sales & Acquiring, India and South Asia, Visa; Ripunjai Gaur, CBO- offline Payments, Paytm; and Abhimanyu Jha, Founder, SabPaisa.
Speaking about digitisation of business and how important it is to have a digital footprint, Paytm’s Ripunjai said, “Lot of businesses were dealing in cash, we were never aware of their potential. With digitalisation coming in, we know what is the true potential of that business. So, payment is just a foot in the door. With the digitalisation journey coming up merchants have a lot of other regions. There has to be a cost machine, there has to be a loyalty solution, there has to be devices, so with a period of step-by-step journey, I think the revenue opportunity is huge.”
“The only challenge we can see is how we can connect because India has a lot of demographic differences among cities, a lot of regional context, so the only challenge which we see is how as a company- as Paytm, how we can address those. India is not a place where you can make a marketing strategy and it will work for the entire nation,” he added.
Adding on to the challenges that is being faced Abhimanyu said, “You need to really become, you know, to start a small business- they need to go global, they need to become international and here, one of the biggest problems we are facing at SabPaisa is I think how to determine whether the business is genuine. Fraud is a big challenge here and so in two lines I think what one thing is really lacking in our country, maybe, I don’t know this exists in the world- we always look at people as consumers.”
“We make sure that you know we really gave out loans by seeing that the person must have a good credit rating. So that makes sure that this person will return your money. But this is not a very very organized way of rating. So some sort of rating system has to evolve for this thing to happen,” he added.
Explaining further Ripunjai added, “Two things which are very important for small business and sometimes become a challenge are trust and ease of operations. Most of these owners are like self-operated merchants, they’re like owners. So, when you operate your shop yourself there is a lot of multitasking that needs to be done. Payments, every 5-10 minutes they have to do a transaction. So there has to be another cognitive load of taking the payment. It has to be reduced to zero, and that is where the aggregator has to play a role.”
He added, “Trust is a two way phenomenon. The acquirer has to trust the merchant while the merchant has to trust the acquirer. So, there are a lot of things, if a new merchant comes and he does not have any digital footprints it is very difficult for the acquirer to trust the merchant. If we can have a system where trust of new merchants can be assessed and merchants can also have a trust. Trust will only come if you have experienced it and understand it. And we have seen at Paytm, if that trust is there then merchants are more happy taking the digital transaction than the cash.”
Notably, while the importance of a digital footprint is clear, it’s not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. The specific strategy will vary depending on the nature of the business, its target audience, and its goals. It requires ongoing effort to ensure that the digital presence remains relevant and effective.