Mumbai: When the entire country was reeling under the intense impact of the pandemic lockdown, Payworld, a fintech company based out of Gurugram – Delhi NCR and a Banking Correspondent for a number of banks, stepped in and transformed the lives of people from the marginal sections of the society with its essential financial services.
Payworld’s assisted financial services cater mainly to the semi-urban and rural citizens of India. With its network of over 4 lac retailers, the company provided the essential financial services including AEPS, Domestic Money Remittances, Insurances, Digital Payments, Rail and Air ticketing and others to a very large number of citizens who needed these most and helped them remain unaffected by the outbreak.
Prior to the outbreak, it was evident that fintech would play a key role in financial services and COVID-19 accelerated that process. Payworld experienced a surge in demand as working practices and customer banking habits changed in the COVID-19 era. This is because Payworld created a faster, efficient and relatively cheaper financial services distribution network using technology. Payworld led to a steep growth in all its services such as remittance, loans, insurance and ticketing due to our retailers, who are locals from the village, semi-urban and rural areas. They helped us in expanding our reach to the remotest of areas and enabled the people to avoid traveling for long distances. As a result, Payworld increased its retailer base from 2 lac to 4 lac with an aim to penetrate into more rural markets which constitute over 70% of the untapped audience who have no access to digital technology.
Mr. Praveen Dhabhai, COO, Payworld, said, “Health concerns during the pandemic made travel s almost impractical and opened the door for faster onboarding and training of our retailers using technology… This paved way for Payworld to reach out to the semi-urban and rural citizens of India. Today, we have witnessed maximum growth in the states of UP and Bihar with AEPS being the most frequently used Services. Within a year, we have seen a 50% growth in retailers, 25% growth in distributors and 110% growth in transactions. Way forward, we plan to replicate the success of UP and Bihar and further penetrate into the rural areas and contribute to India’s development through financial inclusion and digitization.
About Payworld
Payworld is an initiative from Sugal & Damani group of companies. Flagging off its operations in 2006, Payworld has built a formidable presence in India with over 400,000 active retail touch-points across 630 Districts and 25 states providing access to untouched market segments to the service providers. Payworld, which builds on the business philosophy of “Making Life Simple” offering smart solutions by their intelligent electronic transaction processing platform where a consumer can do financial transactions by visiting retail touchpoints by paying digitally and in cash. These retail points use Payworld’s application which runs on Desktops, Laptops and Mobile phones using Android, Windows, iOS & Java platforms.
