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Looking back at 2016 when we launched Payouts, we had one goal – to give businesses a way to make bulk disbursals in the simplest and easiest manner.
Payouts was well received by the market and we quickly crossed one lakh daily payouts within 12 months of launch. Currently used by over 5000 companies in India, Payouts is used for vendor payouts by marketplaces for use cases such as e-commerce refunds, wage payouts, loan disbursement, insurance claims processing, expense reimbursements, and reward payouts.
After months of usability testing and user interviews, we learned several lessons.
To simplify a payment to a person or a group of people, two things are important:
- Accurate bank details of the beneficiary
- The payment rails you use
With Payouts, we addressed the latter by simplifying the usage of payment rails and made it efficient for high-volume transacting merchants by solving all the limitations faced when using traditional corporate Internet banking solutions.
Consequently, merchants enjoyed high success rates and reduced turnaround time (TAT).
There was more to be done.
We looked at factors that lead to a lower success rate and found that inaccurate bank account details was one of the primary culprits. In our report “Top 10 reasons why bank transfers fail in India“ we talked about this in greater detail.
We did a further deep-dive to discover that the collection of bank details from customers, vendors, or partners was largely a manual process for most businesses and was susceptible to:
- Increased errors
- Increased failed/incorrect transfers
- Reduced transfer success rates
- Exhaustive back and forth communication
- Increase in gratification period
We fixed this with Cashgram.
Cashgram is a payout link used by businesses to send money to their customers, vendors, or partners when only their email address/phone number is known, by simply uploading an excel sheet with recipient details or through APIs.
Since its inception, Cashgram has not only helped in putting out many fires for multiple payments teams, on multiple occasions we’ve had our merchants thanking us for enabling them to provide a phenomenal positive shift in payment experience.
For instance, last month we helped solve a major crisis at an NGO which could have ended up as a PR disaster. During the peak season, they had to make 5 bulk payouts a day, some of the problems they faced were:
- Errors in collecting bank details.
- Exhaustive to-and-fro in processing payments due to incorrect details
- Disputes regarding payout reversals
- Inefficient Routing – Sometimes salaries for 4 or more people were sent to the same person
- Money may or may not reach the end-user
After stumbling across an article that rated Cashfree as one of the best payments gateways, they reached out to us with their issues and we were more than happy to enable them with the tools required to solve them.
Roadblocks that helped us pivot
Every obstacle that we encountered only made us get more creative with our solution. The following are the problems that we noticed merchants facing and we systematically solved them with Cashgram:
Authorization
To ensure the Cashgram link reaches the intended beneficiary only, we use OTP verification (to the number maintained by the business). This link expires automatically 15 mins after the OTP verification. Businesses also have the ability to set a link expiry time to enhance security.
Redemption
We wanted to replicate the Payment Gateway model, offering the widest range of payout modes – Visa, Mastercard, bank transfer, Paytm, and Amazon Pay (the last of which is an exclusive partnership with Cashfree).
This allowed businesses to enable users to get paid the way they want. If details entered by the beneficiary are incorrect, Cashgram allows the beneficiary two further attempts to successfully enter their payment mode details.
Security
To ensure funds go to the intended beneficiary, we introduced beneficiary name verification, which cross-checks the name entered by the beneficiary against the name maintained by the banks. Only if the name matches exactly, the funds are transferred.
Cashfree allows merchants to define user roles to enable businesses to implement the maker-checker flow. We launched this feature to weed out any possibility of malpractice or misuse that might happen. Know more.
Notification
We initially allowed notification to beneficiaries via SMS and email. However, merchants reported low open rates that typically accompanies SMS and email notifications.
We’ve solved this problem by integrating with WhatsApp – allowing businesses to notify their beneficiaries using WhatsApp business accounts under their name. When the beneficiary clicks on the link, they are then rerouted to a webpage with the business’ name and logo to bolster trust.
By simplifying the complexity of Payouts, through our neat and interactive design we enabled a stellar experience for our merchants and in turn, their stakeholders.
3 steps payouts with Cashgram
Lifecycle of a Cashgram
When you create a Cashgram there are various states that it goes through before users redeems it to their accounts. Merchants can track the status in real time.
A state is final if it does not allow transitioning to any other state within the lifecycle. The various states in the Cashgram lifecycle are as below:
Built for scale
Cashgram has been widely adopted by major industry players for a variety of use-cases. Coupled with Cashfree’s rails and partnerships with major banks. Cashgram is built for businesses looking to improve their transaction success rate using transaction load balancing and allows companies to try, test, and succeed experimenting with our highly customizable API & UX/UI
Your customers, vendors, and partners have waited enough. Sign up now!
