FreeCharge drives cashless payments with Ezetap

Counting and handling cash may soon become a thing of the past for offline retailers. FreeCharge, the digital payments platform, has inked a partnership with Ezetap, the Bangalore-based pioneer in mobile payments, allowing the entire base of FreeCharge users to immediately start using their wallets to make payments at thousands of Ezetap service points consisting of small and mid-sized retailers across India.

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The partnership draws FreeCharge closer its vision of creating an ecosystem where organised and unorganised merchant networks can come together and accept electronic payments.

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Ezetap’s Universal Mobile Wallet Acceptance is India’s first universal solution that allows merchants to accept customer payments from any mobile wallet through their existing Ezetap mobile point of sale (mPoS) application. To encourage adoption of digital payments, FreeCharge will also run yearlong offers with individual Ezetap merchants that come on board with Ezetap.

Commenting on the partnership, Govind Rajan, Chief Operating Officer FreeCharge said: “Our aim is to create the ecosystem for digital payments and help consumers move from cash to digital. We are excited to announce this strategic partnership with Ezetap which will further enable millions of FreeCharge customers to transact at over 40,000 POS terminals in the swiftest and safest manner possible. FreeCharge believes partnerships are critical to scale acceptance and build habit of digital payments.”

Today, customers are reluctant to use any medium other than cash for small ticket transactions due to the friction involved in the payment experience. This partnership eliminates friction by facilitating payments with just a few clicks in a secure payment method. Enabling wallet payments at retail merchants will enable the wallet consumers to use FreeCharge both not just online but at over 40000 offline points too.

Abhijit Bose, CEO of Ezetap said: “Our mission is to allow every business in India to easily collect payments from their customers, supporting every method and instrument that their customers want to use. We are excited to partner with FreeCharge to provide a simple and engaging user experience for both merchants and consumers. Thousands of Ezetap smartPOS solutions are being activated at merchants every week, and each application is pre-enabled with universal wallet acceptance. Our merchant can accept, load and take advantage of FreeCharge offers with a simple click.”

FreeCharge recently announced doing 1 million transactions a day on its platform and with partnership the company will further strengthen its reach at offline stores and is aggressively on its way to achieve 7 million transactions a day by end of 2016.

Consumers across the country use FreeCharge to make prepaid, post-paid, DTH and Electricity bill payments for numerous utility service providers in addition to leading online and offline merchants.

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Ezetap is a mobile-based payments service provider for emerging markets based in Bangalore. The Ezetap service is PCI-DSS compliant, has been certified by multiple, leading financial institutions. The company has raised over Rs. 210 Crores (USD 35 Million) in funding to date and its investors include Social+Capital Partnership – the silicon valley firm led by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, Helion advisors, American Express, and Li Ka-shing’s horizons ventures.

The article first appeared in Business Standart