Indian Digital Payments Startup Razorpay Acquires Ezetap to Access Offline Market

Razorpay, Curlec, acquisition

India’s digital payments startup Razorpay picked up its biggest acquisition to date in a move to tap the offline, in-person payments market, which still accounts for the majority of electronic money movement in the country.

The Bangalore company bought offline payments firm Ezetap, which enables point-of-sale (POS) and on-delivery payments, according to a Thursday (Aug. 18) blog post. The deal is worth $150 million Reuters reported, citing an unnamed source.

The move is intended to put Razorpay on track to become one of the biggest omnichannel payments services for businesses in India, the post stated. The company is striving to streamline online payments and help entrepreneurs scale in a digital environment. With Ezetap, Razorpay can also put the same effort into in-person payments.

“There is still a large portion of offline payments and in-person payments that we don’t cover,” Razorpay Co-Founder Shashank Kumar told Reuters.

Ezetap will continue to operate independently and could get another $50 million next year based on performance, the report stated.

Ezetap serves banks and merchants and has achieved a $10 billion gross transaction volume (GTV) annual run rate, according to the blog post. It works with companies like HDFC, Axis Bank, Amazon and BigBasket.

“We share Razorpay’s vision of simplifying payments and banking for Indian businesses, being available wherever their customers are, and being a one-stop payment and banking platform across channels,” said Ezetap CEO Byas Nambisan in the post.

He added that working together, there are “limitless possibilities” Ezetap and Razorpay can achieve in bringing businesses across India the best omnichannel payments experience.

The news comes two months after Razorpay led the $3 million Series A funding round for HostBooks, an Indian FinTech startup focused on microbusinesses and small- to medium-sized businesses.

Read more: Razorpay Helps FinTech HostBooks Raise $3M

The capital infusion was planned to go toward new products that support HostBooks’ order management, neobanking, advanced inventory and production management, and business decision-making tools.