Merchants & retailers rely on credit to run and grow their businesses and expand their customer base. Easy access to credit, facilitated by embedded finance, enables merchants to purchase more stock, widen their product portfolio, respond to fluctuating demand, buy high-value SKUs (which could be slow-moving), and increase the space and assets in their store. Embedded Finance has shown to double the Average Order Value and Customer Lifetime Value for B2B E-Commerce platforms, depending on the sector (whitegoods, groceries, pharma, apparel, etc). 

Embedded Credit is basically when non-financial companies offer their customers access to credit through their technology platform. Popular examples in India are Khatabook, Arzooo etc. who are facilitating working capital loans to their partner merchants/retailers. Embedded finance also enables banks, insurers, and wealth management companies to form valuable partnerships to distribute their products and services. According to one Forrester report 2020, embedded finance is touted to be a USD 7 trillion opportunity globally by 2030.

Very few merchants are approved for loans by formal channels and have to acquire credit from informal sources. Such credit is either too small to have an impact or offered at terms that don’t facilitate their growth in the long term. B2B E-Commerce platforms that have the ability to offer credit can relieve these bottlenecks for merchants and unlock growth for both, their merchants and themselves.

So how do B2B e-commerce platforms facilitate embedded credit?

Digital platforms catering to merchants and distributors can offer tailored credit products in-context at the point of demand creation on their platform. Few examples of fintechs operating in this space and facilitating embedded credit options are retail-tech Arzooo, Accounting-tech Khatabook to name a few. Please find an illustrative flow chart for better understanding.

 Advantages for all the parties involved 

The key in this scenario is to provide tailored credit products as part of the digital platform.

Why Embedded Finance?

Embedded Finance Infrastructure natively enables credit for all merchants within a B2B E-Commerce platform. It handles the end-to-end lending flow, including the customer journey, loan offer generation, lender partnerships, and third-party integrations, repayment etc.

In conclusion

Ultimately, Embedded Finance enables digital platforms to leverage their unique position to help their merchants. It empowers B2B E-Commerce businesses to innovate for their customers, offer effective credit products, and provide credit to customers who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access it. This sharply accelerates their own growth and the growth of their retail partners.

India’s e-commerce sector has grown significantly over the past few years and is expected to grow multifold in the coming years. The growth has been driven by increasing internet penetration, rising smartphone adoption, and the growing popularity of online shopping among consumers. The D2C and B2B segments have seen significant growth due to the increasing popularity of online marketplaces, making it easier for businesses to reach customers directly and for buyers to find a wider range of products at competitive prices. The projected growth of the D2C market to US$ 60 billion by FY27 and the overall e-commerce market to US$ 350 billion by 2030 highlights the tremendous potential of the sector in India (according to a recent report published by e-commerce enablement platform Shiprocket in collaboration with CII)

Further, India has seen a boom in smartphone penetration as well as tremendous growth in digital transactions. The number of internet connections in 2021 saw a tremendous growth to 830 million, driven by the ‘Digital India’ programme and the digital transactions in January 23 were close to (in terms of value) INR 12.98 Lk Cr (according to the latest TRAI data).

Given an understanding of the low adoption of mobile penetration in rural areas, assisted commerce was born and is now a full-fledged huge business opportunity for the commerce industry.

The assisted commerce industry is growing rapidly, driven by several factors, including the increasing popularity of mobile messaging apps, the rise of voice assistants, and the growing demand for personalized and seamless shopping experiences.

One of the key benefits of assisted commerce is that it allows businesses to provide 24/7 customer service, without the need for human customer support staff. This can help improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs for businesses.

Assisted commerce is also helping businesses to improve their customer engagement and loyalty by providing personalized recommendations and targeted marketing messages.

Imagine a situation where an individual may require support to make online purchases or conduct transactions- What started as kiosks in tier–3, 4, 5, and 6 towns and villages to help people navigate online government services and promote financial inclusion created a whole new business model.

The goal of assisted commerce is to enable individuals to participate in the digital economy and make purchases independently, by offering some level of assistance.

Assisted commerce can take many forms, depending on the individual’s needs and abilities. For example, helping individuals in rural areas to navigate online shopping platforms, bill payments, and train and bus ticket purchases. Alternatively, it may involve support staff or caregivers assisting individuals with shopping in physical stores or conducting financial transactions.

Assisted commerce is important because it can help promote independence and autonomy for individuals who may otherwise face barriers to participating in the new economy. By providing the necessary support and assistance, individuals with disabilities or the elderly can have greater control over their finances and make purchases that align with their needs and goals.

On this, Prepaid cards can be a very useful tool, as they offer a way for caregivers or support staff to manage and monitor the individual’s spending while still allowing them to make purchases independently. Many prepaid card programs offer features specifically designed for assisted commerce, such as cardholder and caregiver controls.

Some examples of the types of transactions that can happen via Assisted Commerce:

1. Online shopping: Individuals who require assistance to navigate online shopping platforms may receive help from caregivers or support staff to browse products, compare prices, and make purchases.
2. Bill payments: Individuals may require assistance with paying bills (utility/mobile/etc), such as by helping to navigate online payment platforms
3. Banking transactions: Individuals may require assistance with banking transactions by making deposits or withdrawals at a bank branch or through online or mobile banking platforms.
4. Direct money transfers can also be facilitated with the help of assisted commerce. This can involve using a variety of payment methods, such as bank transfers, wire transfers, or mobile payment apps.

We at CARD91 can play an important role in facilitating assisted commerce by providing innovative solutions that will be easier for businesses that may have limited access to banking services. If you’ve any use case, particularly on Assisted Commerce, you may write us at sales@card91.io

Written by Khushboo Bakhru, Senior Manager – Partnerships & Sales

What is data monetization?

Data Monetization refers to the process of using data to obtain quantifiable economic benefits. Earlier, payment providers were making money from the fees charged to merchants for accepting payments from their customers. But data monetization has become a new business model which generates customer insights from data via advanced analytics to monetize the data itself. 

Let’s get started with example and understand how payment data can be a next big pay off for payment providers-

For example,  large ecommerce companies like Flipkart,Amazon or Myntra, n number of transactions are happening in fraction of seconds. These ecom companies can use their transactional data and create highly differentiated advertisement offerings in real-time bidding situations. Informative data about customer demographics and activity will allow the company to offer differentiated prices.

Another example is, an online classified portal uses algorithms to spot when customers move to a new location. This information can be used by businesses to business partners to offer targeted services.

These examples highlight  how these platforms are taking advantage of new approaches and how they created value for customers along with new revenue streams in a world shaped by technology and data.

For payment providers, this shift towards holistic patterns of payment acceptance, including new softwares and financial services enabling the payment processing fast and are in a step to become a commodity. Leveraging data is a first step in the direction of redefining business models to add new value to their business. 

From payment gateways to issuers, today’s payments providers have a treasure of data at their fingertips.  Data monetization ensures that you get the most value from your data by increasing profit, decreasing costs, and optimizing opportunities for the business.

Data is not the business in the payment industry. However, it’s a resourceful by-product of a business.

It is an asset- which has untapped potential to positively affect your bottom line.

You even have the opportunity to utilize your data to streamline operations, enhance your services and goods, cut costs, and identify new opportunities. Or you can use this data as a new revenue stream, wherein it has its own right that you can sell access to.

How can you monetize data?

As our world has become increasingly data-driven, there has been development of different ways to monetize data. Payment providers are in a distinctly powerful position to capture emerging opportunities as they have deep stats of merchants as well as of the consumers, wherein they can merge these two borders by providing a lucrative incentive to influence consumer’s choice of merchants to extract value through monetized data or through third parties.

Payment providers seek new high revenue streams, many are moving into consumer finance, offering cash advances to merchants, or developing their own business management solution. Payment providers nowadays are filling the gap between merchants and consumers by providing both parties lucrative incentives.

The question arises, how can you monetize the data? One can create revenue from data stats with providers by first identifying what type of data they have, understanding the value of that data of merchants on customers and building sustainable business models to build go to market strategy.

“Payment providers that can find ways to monetize their vast wealth of transaction data can seize a powerful opportunity to differentiate.”- Christian Low

Transactions build great insights around purchasing patterns

Data is created whenever a customer uses a digital payment method, either shopping online or in store purchase. In fact, this transaction data generates variable data points like:

• How much was paid in total?
• How many items were  purchased?
• Where did the transaction take place?
• Total transaction at that store? etc.

Payment providers can also create multi-faceted data which includes detailed analysis of each merchant and its transactional ecosystem.  

Together this collective information from thousands of transactions, conducted by thousands of customers every day, forms a pool of rich connected data points. This entire data set can be used in real time depending on a provider’s infrastructure.

What can be a successful data monetization model?

Payment service providers can improvise the solution using the data of the sector that are currently improving at a radical pace. Fashion is an industry judiciously using these data points. Using the user transaction and order data, they can build a financial scoring model of their customers. This is provided to BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) companies to facilitate them making decisions on providing deferred payments to customers. In another example, online classifieds use algorithms on data points to spot when a customer moves to a new city, which in turn can be used by their B2B partners to offer targeted services, like offers from local businesses.