Razorpay enters loyalty & rewards management space with PoshVine acquisition

This is Razorpay’s fourth acquisition this year and the seventh overall. It comes close on the heels of its $200-million acquisition of offline point-of-sale (PoS) firm Ezetap in August this year.

Founded in 2011, PoshVine enables banks, fintechs and payment networks to increase customer engagement through its offers and reward management solutions. Currently, its platform aggregates offers from over 5,000 merchants and brings it in one solution to banks, which is then extended to credit card holders.

The bootstrapped startup works with over 20 banks and card networks such as SBI Cards, HDFC Bank, Visa, DBS, Kotak Mahindra Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, American Express (Amex) across India and Southeast Asia.

Under the deal, PoshVine’s 36-member team will join Razorpay and operate its loyalty and rewards vertical.

With this acquisition, Razorpay is expected to help banks increase customer retention for their credit offerings through new merchant offers; allow merchants to automate the process of pitching discount offers to banks; provide timely and customised offers to customers while allowing them to pay through credit points of banks.

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Razorpay also expects to enhance the offline shopping experience for customers by integrating PoshVine’s loyalty and reward offerings on its point-of-sale network which it acquired through Ezetap.

“We continue to see a bigger opportunity to work with banks and help them upgrade their financial infrastructure. While banks can acquire a customer for their credit card offering, they are unsure if it will be used. That’s where we see the rewards and loyalty play coming in, where it is critical to provide the right offer in the right context,” Shashank Kumar, managing director and cofounder of Razorpay told ET in an interaction.

For PoshVine, it will get access to Razorpay’s large base of over 8 million merchants.

PoshVine’s customer base in Southeast Asia is expected to bolster Razorpay’s presence in the region following its international foray in February with the acquisition of Malaysian fintech firm Curlec.

“With our offline and online operations, there’s a sizable portfolio of spends that we are managing. So, we are now looking to offer a bespoke platform for businesses where they can create offers, loyalty and rewards,” added Kumar.

Currently, Razorpay’s solution stack for banks includes card tokenisation, ‘Razorpay TokenHQ’ and plug-n-play recurring payments interface MandateHQ.

With the latest acquisition, fintech unicorn Razorpay – last valued at $7.5 billion – is stepping up its competition against rival unicorn Pine Labs, which also forayed into the online payment gateway with the launch of ‘Plural’ in October last year.

In 2021, Pine Labs – which majorly earns its revenue through offline payments services – also acquired Singapore-based loyalty payments startup Fave and has plans to launch the service in India and enter the consumer payments space.

Razorpay’s other acquisition this year includes payments solutions provider IZealiant Technologies.