En-cashing the cashless way: Ravi Jagannathan

Y PAY CASH a mobile app start-up to empower Indian merchants and bring in cashless economy through mobile payment ecosystem. Ravi Jagannathan, MD & CEO of Y-Cash Software Solutions spoke to DQ Channels about its elaborate India plans, the unique technology of its app and success strategy

THE STORY BEHIND Y PAY CASH

The start ups' core team come from banking and technology experience. The combination of both made them understood the Indian consumer need to have a secure solution in transferring money from one party to other party. Hence they ended up developing a very highly secured solution which they found appropriate to conduct a volume of transaction in India. It took then two years to put the technology in place. After getting the license from RBI in 2011 it set up its back end infrastructure in 2012 which is required to run our service on mobile platform.

CHALLENGES FACED

Fundamentally if a company has got to do anything with common man's money RBI regulations comes into play. RBI has got a very strong regulation in place and have got certain provisions when it comes to regulations. The basics of all these regulations is to ensure that the public money is safe and is not being benefited by others in an unlawful way. Transparency in transaction and prevention of money laundering are addressed in the regulation. It is a new generation business model and rules are framed to fit this in and assure trust in these embedded systems. Again it is not a normal banking channel and it is more to do with technology. So the regulatory board assures that the technology YPAYCASH used is appropriate.

MISSION THROUGH YPAYCASH

A couple of years ago the solution providers in mobile were very limited and even if there were any it was not meant for any serious purpose. YPAYCASH wanted to make sure that the common man is able to use the common instrument that he has in hand for beyond communication. Secondly, India being one of the largest economy in the world we have certain challenges when it comes to manage micro economy. He found one of the contributing reasons for having that kind of a cash ready economy is basically comes from the consumer and the merchant's part. So merchants not having enough point of sales visions. From customer side a considerable number of them do not have bank or credit card account. These two reasons are one of the biggest contributing reason for cash ready account. By providing this technology in mobile YPAYCASH is empowering a person to transfer money without having additional hardware or software and without giving away much details.

WHY WILL PEOPLE TRUST Y PAY CASH WITH THEIR MONEY?

"When it comes to the question of trust there are certain basic parameters", says Ravi. Now RBI or the finance ministry when came out with their regulation they by far taken all these aspects into consideration. Secondly, YPAYCASH do not touch the real money. "We are talking about very minimum transactional value. And that is where the majority of transaction is happening. If a person wants to recharge his mobile he can use our service. Now for 100 or 200 rupees does he really have to worry about whether he can trust YPAYCASH? He is more happy about the fact that his mobile can do that. I do not think that level of transaction requires trust", believes Ravi.

Also there are two aspects to it. Firstly, the fundamental technology that they are using is a very confidential one. Between two mobiles data is completely secured and again transaction is reaching a destination which is secured. Secondly, the customer might think his or her data is not secured just for the sake of it. That is a perception. It is sometime a mind block. So if you have a trust in the technology then it is a question of how much data I am exposing. Here the technology will take care so that whatever money one is putting in is secured while availing our service.

 

THE BACK END FUNCTIONING OF YPAYCASH

YPAYCASH is a made for India solution. It as got all the components of payment, including quaint level encryption, validation, and data capturing. At server level the transaction processing is happening. The money transfer, the deposit in escrow bank, the money transaction etc every step of the function is happening with our technology. 95 percent of the payment process is automatic. The back end technology that we have addresses on-boarding of customers and merchants. And the transaction capture.

EMPOWERING MERCHANTS IN SMALL STORES ACROSS INDIA

Merchants tare of are two types. Proximity and non-proximity merchants. The former consists of merchants in local stores where customers purchase goods and pay through debit or credit cards or cash. "We have enabled 3000-plus proximity merchants so far in Tamil Nadu and they have the ability to take the payment from customers and conduct the transaction through our app. The latter are based online where transaction happen through online sites. This could involve your electricity bill, DTH service, mobile top-up, e-shopping etc. And here again we have aligned with 3000 merchants to service customers through our application", explains Ravi.

CHALLENGES FACED

"It is a laborious process to acquire merchants", feels Ravi of YPAYCASH. He adds, "We need time to have a pan-India presence in proximity merchants. We chose Tamil Nadu to start off considering the size of population and number of metros". The company is almost done with the state as they have covered seven cities. For last one year they have enabled them and now all know how to do a transaction. "As we speak we are enabling in Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh simultaneously. We have our channel partners who are incorporated in the task of enabling and acquisition of merchants", says Ravi.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Y PAY CASH's success lies in increasing the transaction value through its app in the coming days. Currently nearly Rupees 5-lakh worth of transaction happens through YPAYCASH every day. And by another two years it vouches to reach `200 crore of transaction annually with a couple of million of customers in its bag.