Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Digital lending company PayU Finance’s buy now pay later (BNPL) solution LazyPay has partnered with the digital storefront provider for small businesses Dukaan to offer BNPL service to small sellers and entrepreneurs and help them scale their operations. Introduced in 2017, LazyPay said its merchant ecosystem has grown multifold to 46,000 currently, of which nearly 60 per cent come from tier II and tier III markets.
Integrating the BNPL solution into the available payment modes will help such merchants improve their sales and encourage first-time customers to become repeat customers, the company said in a statement. In addition to quick and seamless checkout experiences, Dukaan will also benefit from LazyPay’s near 100 per cent transaction success rate, it added.
“India is a booming economy and SMBs are contributing largely towards growth. They are becoming ubiquitous with the increasing adoption of technology. We are excited to partner with Dukaan as Buy Now Pay Later solutions to increase opportunities for SMBs, allowing them to cater to a wider section of online customers with a penchant for the faster and hassle-free shopping experience,” said Varun Vummidi, Payments Head, LazyPay.
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LazyPay extending its solutions to SMB merchants, according to the company, is a strategic response to BNPL becoming one of the preferred payment options in current times. According to an industry report, technology adoption in small businesses has moved from 29 per cent to 40 per cent post-Covid and will be characterized by digital transformation. Additionally, as per the report, the BNPL sector will rise to become the fastest growing online payment option with a 6 er cent rise in market share from 3 per cent to 9 per cent in 2024, it said.
In May this year, PayU launched a new initiative to provide payment flow and checkout in major Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada for merchants to avoid customer drop-offs at payment due to language issues. In view of the expanding business, the company had announced the appointment of three senior leaders – Narendra Babu as the Chief Technology Officer for the India Payments business; Mohit Bedi, as the Senior Vice President (SVP), to lead strategic initiatives and the Bill Payments business, and Vineet Sethi, as SVP to lead PayU’s Diversified Financial Services portfolio.
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