Razorpay joins ONDC to offer payment reconciliation service for buyer apps, seller apps, logistics partners

Mumbai-based Razorpay, the full-stack payments and banking platform for businesses, said that it will be joining the Open Network for Digital Commerce ecosystem. This would make it the first payment gateway in India to launch payment reconciliation services for buyer and seller apps. 

In a statement issued on Thursday, Razorpay said through the service, it will facilitate ease of transacting on ONDC by timely routing settlement information for a given transaction and assisting Network Participants (NPs) with settling funds. 

The payment reconciliation service for NPs, such as buyers, sellers, and logistic partners, will streamline the payment processes on ONDC and will provide NPs with an integrated single view of all their transactions. 

Razorpay claimed that the service will be a foolproof solution that would validate transactions and maintain audit trails to support documentation that will inform any dispute or discrepancy that may arise. 

Shashank Kumar, managing director and co-founder of Razorpay, said: “We at Razorpay have always envisioned a world rich of businesses of all sizes, help them leverage digital payment technologies to sell more and grow faster. So, we are really excited to support the government in this shared vision of democratising e-commerce through the ONDC platform and helping Indian SMEs and kirana store owners reap the benefits of digital commerce." 

With an open network approach, where the buyers and sellers do not need to necessarily be on the same platform to be able to do a business transaction, ONDC will enable small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access a larger buyer universe. 

Thampy Koshy, CEO of ONDC, said: “We are thrilled to welcome Razorpay to 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 and we look forward to working with Razorpay towards achieving this vision." 

ONDC has crossed the 5,000 daily orders mark in the retail category, mainly foods and beverages (F&B) and grocery. With this, the platform records a 25-fold growth in the past two months.

Razorpay is the second fintech to join ONDC. In March, Walmart-backed PhonePe went live on ONDC through its hyperlocal commerce app – Pincode. 

Last month, the network added mobility aggregation platform Namma Yatri which is open source and does not take any commission from drivers. 

ONDC went live in some pin codes of Bengaluru on September 30, and has since expanded to several cities.  

The merchant base on ONDC has risen to 85,000 currently from around 800 in December, according to a report in Moneycontrol. Of the total seller base, 31,000 are from non-mobility categories like food, grocery, home decor and electronics. 

Earlier this month, Razorpay formed an advisory board and roped in former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, NS Vishwanathan, as the Chairperson. 

The board also appointed several industry stakeholders as members of the committee. This includes Arijit Basu (Chairman, HDB Financial Services & Former MD, State Bank of India), Aruna Sundararajan (Former Secretary, Ministries of Steel, IT & Telecom, GoI), KP Krishnan (Former Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship), among others.
 
All the members of the Advisory Board will meet, discuss and provide feedback on various metrics including customer experience and safety, risk monitoring, cybercrime prevention, and compliance management processes, among others. 

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