Over the last year, Cashfree saw 70K merchants On Its Platform. By 2021, That Number Doubled

• BySheetal Sidhu     |    August 25, 2021

Buoyed by the rapid adoption of ecommerce and online payments in India in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, payments processing startup Cashfree said it saw a 150 percent increase in the number of total active and transacting merchants on its platform over the last year. The number of merchant sign-ups on its platform rose from around 70,000 in July 2020 to over 1.30 lakh by July 2021 — up 95 percent across sectors including ecommerce, digital goods, and edtech, as both businesses and consumers went online to shop safely and observe COVID-19 protocols. The PayPal-backed startup also saw traction from sectors such as financial services, gaming, and hospitality on its platform, with more merchants than ever signing up for its products that enable online payments, bulk disbursals, instant refunds, auto collect, and buy now, pay later, among others.

The number of overall transactions by volume doubled to two million in 2021, from a million in 2019, the startup said. “The pandemic has led businesses to rethink their entire payment management processes. Digitisation has helped businesses move from offline to online in order to sell their products or continue servicing their customer — and we saw that sentiment reflect in our merchant onboarding as well,” Cashfree’s Co-founder and CEO, Akash Sinha said. Cashfree processed transactions worth $12 billion in FY20, up 25 percent monthly. It aims to hit $30 billion in the total value of transactions processed by the end of the calendar year 2021.

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