Naspers rolls out payment gateway PayU in India

South African media giant Naspers has quietly rolled out its payment gateway product PayU to the Indian market.

According to Indian digital news site Media Nama, the gateway has first been deployed on Ibibo and its eCommerce sites tradus.in and goibibo.

Ibibo is a social network co-owned by Naspers and Chinese web giant Tencent.

PayU claims to enable and empower “businesses and individuals to safely transact and easily participate in the economy via mobile or the web”.

It also allows websites to integrate eCommerce transactions through online payments.

In South Africa, the service functions both as a payment gateway and an online wallet open to individual users for making online transactions.

Ibibo, which stands for iBuild, iBond is an umbrella site that offers a variety of applications under its social network.

According to Media Nama, Nasper’s payment gateway will be taking on independent e-payment companies like EBS, CC Avenue and BillDesk as well as private banks like HDFC, Citibank and ICICI.

The site additionally reports that the US$18-billion company’s entry into the Indian online payment market “comes at a time when European payments provider Ogone is all set to enter India, with the acquisition of the Indian payment gateway EBS. There have also been talks about Reliance Industries setting up a payment gateway with American Express.”

The Indian iteration of the PayU service claims to offer:

Multiple payment options: According to the product’s website, the gateway will accept payments on Mastercard and Visa credit cards, debit cards from more than 50 banks and internet banking from all of India’s major banks.

API Integratation: Naspers claims to have developed integration with “all major shopping carts” to help businesses integrate the gateway with their site faster.

Transaction Analytics: The company states that its payment analytics feature unravels the “black box” of payment gateways and explains “in detail each and every transaction”.

Value for Money: PayU offers three plans, Economy, Silver and Gold. The Economy plan costs INDRs6 000 (US$121), the Silver INDRs12 000(US$244) and the Gold INDRs24 000 (US$ 487). Naspers also claims it will offer

The launch comes fresh on the heels of news that Naspers had bought eastern European classified website Slando.

PayU is also a significant player in eCommerce markets across this region.

In Poland, for instance, the service claims to own 35% of the eCommerce market. This is largely down to its integration with Poland’s leading online auction site, Allegro.pl, which Naspers also owns.

In Romania, meanwhile ePayment system being part of PayU claims to support over 90% of the eCommerce market in Romania. If correct, this figure makes the company, the undisputable eCommerce leader in the country.

PayU also has presences in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, Russia and the Ukraine, as well as across Africa and the Middle East.