Razorpay declined to comment on the financial terms, but people in the know said the Tiger Global-backed startup is paying about $10 million in cash and shares for BillMe.
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Founded in 2018, Mumbai-based BillMe helps merchants send digital bills to customers. It also provides customer relationship management software to online and offline merchants to help decipher customer behaviour and boost engagement.
BillMe marks the eighth acquisition for Razorpay, which in the past has acquired startups including Malaysian payments firm Curlec, fraud-detection platform ThirdWatch and payroll management solution Opfin.
The acquisition allows Razorpay to double down on value-added services, helping its merchants build loyalty with their customers, as well as go deeper into the offline market.
“Embarking on our omnichannel journey last year, the timing couldn’t be more opportune … We are thrilled about getting a disruptor like BillMe on board,”said Shashank Kumar, managing director and cofounder of Razorpay.
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Over the past few years, Razorpay has been pushing to establish itself as an omnichannel player, by diversifying from being just an online payment gateway and solutions provider.“The good thing about acquisitions such as BillMe is that we can take it to international markets as we scale. But the focus is on India for now,” said a Razorpay spokesperson, responding to ET’s queries.
At present, value-added services such as loyalty solutions, the affordability (buy-now-pay-later) stack and the ‘Magic Checkout’ solution contribute 15% to its revenue, Razorpay said.
With BillMe’s client base of over 4,000 merchants, Razorpay will also get access to large chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Decathlon, Baggit, Relaxo Footwear and Cinepolis.
Last year, Razorpay acquired point-of-sale payments provider Ezetap in a $150 million cash-and-equity deal, making its entry into offline businesses.
Razorpay said it will integrate BillMe’s stack with Ezetap’s PoS terminals, providing more solutions including for bill management, payment acceptance and loyalty programmes to offline merchants.
In the past, fintech companies BharatPe and Pine Labs have also entered the merchant loyalty space through the acquisition of Zillion (erstwhile Payback India) and Fave.
“With Razorpay, we now have a large scope to deepen our tech expertise and create a difference for our businesses. Reinforcing integrations across all PoS touchpoints enhances the value we aim to provide to our clients,” said Kuber Pritmani, cofounder of BillMe.
As a part of the deal, Razorpay will be onboarding all 25 employees of BillMe.
The acquisition comes at a time when Razorpay has been asked by the Reserve Bank of India to pause new merchant onboarding, in relation to its payment aggregator licence. Other major gateways asked by the regulator to stop new merchant onboarding include Paytm, Cashfree and PayU India.
Razorpay has raised $742 million till date and was last valued at $7.5 billion.