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Business News/ Money / Calculators/  It’s tough to get multiple banks on one payment platform
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It’s tough to get multiple banks on one payment platform

Chillr's co-founder and CEO, Sony Joy talks to Mint on their various banking tie-ups and future plans

Aniruddha Chowdhury/MintPremium
Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint

Last month, Chillr, a smartphone app that allows transfer of money to contacts in a phone book, partnered with Bank of Baroda for its mobile app. In February, it had tied up with HDFC Bank Ltd. Sony Joy, co-founder and chief executive officer of the company said that they are in talks with more banks for such partnerships. Chillr spinned off from MobMe, a mobile value-added services firm, as a subsidiary company in 2013. Mint spoke to Joy on the various banking tie-ups and future plans.

You currently have tie-ups with HDFC Bank and Bank of Baroda. Is the user interface same for all the banks?

With a Chillr app you can send money to any contact on your phone. Here, the money goes to the contact’s bank account. If the receiver doesn’t have the Chillr app installed on her smartphone, she will get a link via an SMS. When she clicks on the link, she can download the app and the money will reach the account number that she provides. There is also another option for those who don’t have the Chillr app. In this you can just give your account number with the MMID (Mobile Money Identifier) or IFSC (Indian Financial System Code). Every payment from Chillr goes to a bank account. This process remains the same. However, there is some difference in terms of other features. For instance, some banks may not have the enabled recharge option for technical reasons such as refund policy and the opening of nodal account.

Every feature will come to every bank, but at a different point of time. For instance, when we initially launched with HDFC Bank, the utility payment option was disabled. But now this facility is available. However, for Bank of Baroda users it is not enabled yet.

Was it a conscious decision to tie up with HDFC Bank first? Are there more such partnerships in the pipeline?

In India you can enter the mobile payments space either through a bank or as a fintech company. It is tough to bring multiple banks on one payment platform. Unlike the movie ticketing industry, we don’t have a single platform for banking and payments. We want to break that. We spoke to 15 banks before we finalised to launch with HDFC Bank. We knew that there would be a perception that it is a bank-led initiative because people didn’t expect this from a fintech company. We launched with HDFC Bank to get visibility, hence it was our obvious choice. It had been in the works for 22 months.

Today, besides HDFC Bank and Bank of Baroda, we have three more banks that have integrated with us, which will take the count to five. We are launching with one private sector bank very soon. And by the second week of December, another major public sector bank will be our partner. We hope to take the count to 12 banks in this financial year. Of late, co-operative banks, too, have shown interest in us. In fact, they are more aggressive.

As of now, we are doing 20,000 transactions per day. Of this, almost 50% is person-to-person; the remaining are recharges and bill payments.

Are any other initiatives planned?

We plan to launch payment process on e-commerce websites by mid-January. For instance, along with Net banking, credit card, debit card and wallets, you will also get a payment option via Chillr.

We also plan to launch Chillr for merchants. The merchant option will be available in the ‘Near me’ section on the Chillr app. Here, as a customer you will be able to find a merchant who accepts payments via Chillr. Right now, this is on pilot in Mumbai and Pune. We will launch the first phase in Pune by the end of March. After this, we will be looking to roll it out in eight other cities which includes Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. We are targeting to cover 10,000 merchants by the end of the financial year, and a big chunk of it will include quick service restaurants, kirana stores and pharmacies. This feature will also offer discounts based on your spending pattern and loyalty.

Next year, we plan to launch Chillr credit score based on spending behaviour patterns of users. Also, with just the Chillr score or in combination with formal credit scores, we will give digital credit, which will be visible on the app. It will become a credit card minus the physical card. We are in talks with banks, and they are keen on it. We just need to wait to build that data. The data will be based on Chillr transaction data and bank account data from deeper integration. So, anyone who has enabled the account balance data, can be tracked. Your friend’s score can also have an impact on your score. Since credit score is a more complex process from an algorithm point of view, we will only make it available for premium customers.

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Published: 30 Nov 2015, 09:01 PM IST
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