Stripe launches beta version for testing in India

BENGALURU: After global major PayPal, Stripe has officially entered the digital payments market of India with a beta version being launched and tested with a small group of companies. In a blog post today, Anand Balaji, the India lead of Stripe said that the company is kicking off the beta version for small businesses in India enabling them to accept digital payments.

“These businesses will help us test our platform in the Indian market and provide feedback on features that we’ll need to build to support all Indian businesses looking to accept online payments and run their companies on Stripe,” he wrote on his official blog which was shared on social media by the company.

ET had reported in July 2016 that the Silicon Valley based unicorn had set up an India office and is planning to start payment functions here.

Stripe enables small merchants to sell their products online and accept card payments. They allow transactions in more than 135 currencies, accepts all major card schemes like Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express. Further they allow payments in Bitcoins, Alipay and WeChat, according to the descriptions on their website.

Justifying the company’s move into India which already has a crowded digital payments ecosystem, Balaji said that with 500 million users connected to the internet and having seen the initiation of twice the number of businesses compared to the US, India is uniquely poised to take business online.

By launching a local platform, Stripe will allow Indian merchants to accept payments in Indian currency, connect to their local bank accounts and build products specifically for Indian merchants.

PayPal one of the biggest payments company in the world has recently opened domestic payments for Indian merchants. Now with the entry of Stripe it can only be assumed that online commerce in India will not be handicapped by fast, secure and reliable payment options.