In a bid to enable financial inclusion for the country's SMEs, HDFC Bank, India's largest private bank, has partnered with embedded FinTech platform, Mintoak to create an ecosystem for them, starting with payments. HDFC Bank's SmartHub Vyapar was developed by Mintoak's API-first, cloud-native tech to seamlessly deliver payment acceptance and access to commerce enablement solutions for the merchant in one place.
Today, SMEs are in digital chaos with multiple QRs and payment apps apart from other digital elements like bookkeeping apps, POS solutions etc. While most of these options are widely available for the merchants, the sheer effort of managing them is becoming a distraction. Consolidation of payments on one platform is a way forward that can ease the merchant's pain and allow them to concentrate efforts on their business and key revenue drivers. Amongst the many players jostling for relevance at the merchant counter, this consolidation depends on two aspects (1) Technology that matches or is better than what merchants are currently using, and (2) Offered by someone merchants can trust.
Banks are best placed to ride the consolidation wave given the trust they command as custodians of merchants' current accounts. To reimagine small business payments, this trust needs to be supplemented by cloud-native competitive technology that enables business owners to grow their revenue. Mintoak's omnichannel payments and commerce enablement platform, white labelled as SmartHub Vyapar for HDFC Bank makes accepting payments and accessing financial services easy for merchants.
The new version of the API-first platform has already demonstrated very promising performance metrics across a significant size of their merchant base, further reinforcing the bank's faith in Mintoak. There has been an increase in the overall activation rates, total payment throughput and merchant engagement score with the development of some key product features focused on business growth for merchants.
Parag Rao, Country Head – Payments, Consumer Finance, Technology & Digital Banking, HDFC Bank said, "We have crafted our new SmartHub Vyapar app to meet every need of the merchant and bring efficiencies to their ecosystem and help them grow their business."
Raman Khanduja, Co-founder & CEO of Mintoak said, "A merchant is looking for a comprehensive solution that offers efficient payments, enables commerce and provides easy access to finance. We strongly believe that as custodians of money, banks command trust. Complemented by agile technology, they are best placed to offer a full stack of integrated solutions – payments, VAS and financial services. We are confident that we will continue delivering cutting-edge solutions to complement the bank's trust and empower business owners to grow."
