Cross-Border Payments Made Easy; Payoneer To Enter Indian Marketplace

Payoneer Inc., a leading online payments company based in the U.S., will made its services available to Indian consumers and officially enter the market by the end of this month. Through this service many small and medium businesses, startups, freelancers and other professionals will be able to receive international payments quickly, efficiently and inexpensively.

"At Payoneer, we make it our mission to empower global commerce by enabling businesses and professionals to pay and get paid globally as easily they do locally," said Scott Galit, CEO of Payoneer. "Previously, Indian freelancers, online marketers and other professionals faced high fees and slow transfer times, and our cross-border payments platform directly addresses these challenges."

Keeping in accordance with Indian regulatory requirements, Payoneer has partnered with Indusland Bank after getting an approval from the central governance. Entering the Indian market next month, the company claims to have got interest from more than 10,000 Indian SMEs already and plans to recruit 250 people to for its global business, a large portion of which will be focused in India.

"We are working to build a presence in India, enabling small businesses to sell to clients in foreign markets, receiving payments in real time at cheaper rates," Galit said. "India will be a strategic investment for the company this year. We are looking at long-term growth, so no specific target numbers yet."

Mary Meeker Internet Trends report shows, India is the world leader in Internet user additions per year, up 63 million in 2014 with 65 percent of traffic through mobile. It also has a huge network of freelancers and startups working for companies across the world, especially US, UK and Europe. Often having to indulge in international transactions, these become a task when SMEs and startups have to bear high exchange rates and slow services when receiving cross-border payments.

"The billing system uses our collection services that collect the payments for free. For instance, a client in Europe — we give them (Indian SMEs) the ability to send their bills to our platform and have electronic credit card collection services," said Galit. "Now when the money is actually delivered to Indian businesses, our starting rate on the foreign exchange to convert from pounds to INR (Indian rupee) is 2%."

According to Galit, the free collection service, low currency conversion fee and real-time money transfer facilities make its service 90% cheaper than competitors. The company claim to have seen interest from SMEs in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. (ET)

"Since we have a partnership with 99designs, Upwork, Google, Airbnb and a host of other platforms, we will connect Indian SMEs to these platforms," said Galit, who also sees this as a platform for Indians to offer their products and services on international marketplaces and freelance platforms. Payoneer claims to receive more than 150,000 applications a month from 200 countries that use the service.