Cashfree Payments, which counts State Bank of India, Apis Partners, Smilegate Investment, and Y Combinator among its investors, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired a Gurugram-based fintech startup in an effort to increase its fintech exposure for ecommerce users. Cashfree’s second bet was the acquisition of Zecpe, though financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Zecpe, which simplifies the checkout process for customers of direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cash free Payments following the acquisition, according to a statement released on Tuesday. Hriday Agarwal, the founder of Zecpe, will join the Cash free Payments team to lead the e-commerce checkout vertical. The staff of the fintech firm will also join Cash free to help scale the product further.
Zecpe, which has been a bootstrapped startup so far, helps merchants increase conversion rates, supporting incremental monetisation and scaling. It is pertinent to mention here that Zecpe’s acquisition comes on the heels of fresh layoffs at Cashfree last month. The company had let go of around 80 employees after periodically evaluating performances and processes.
With this acquisition, Cashfree aims to step up its direct-to-consumer (D2C) checkout capabilities and give its merchants a better end-to-end checkout and payment experience.
The deal will also enable Cashfree Payments to provide additional value-added services like a return to origin (RTO) reduction, fraud detection, and address pre-filling, among others, the statement added. We are certain that this acquisition will strengthen our D2C one-click checkout capabilities and further elevate our leadership position in the SMB space. At Cashfree Payments, we are focused on offering the widest range of payments solutions and thereby constantly evolving our product suite to cater to the changing needs of our merchants,” said Akash Sinha, Co-founder and chief executive officer at Cashfree Payments.
Founded in 2015 by Sinha and Reeju Datta, Cashfree offers full-stack payments solutions to businesses in India, allowing them to collect payments and make payouts via different digital payment instruments. It claims to have more than 300,000 merchants to collect payments and make payouts with simple integration.
Among Cash free’s customers are Nykaa, First Cry, Nature’s Basket, Big Basket, Zomato, Noise, Bella Vita Organic, and My Fitness. It claims to have a market share of more than 50% among payment processors. It competes with Razorpay, Pine Labs, Bill Desk, and Stripe, among others. Previously, Cash free Payments acquired Telr, a payment service provider with operations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as part of its MENA (Middle East and North Africa) expansion strategy. Aside from these regions, the company also has operations in the United States and Canada