Following Sahil’s recent article on open-banking, we’ve received a barrage of enquiries about the products we’re developing. We thought this might be a great time to share what’s in our pipeline.
If you’re a merchant-facing CRM/ERP provider, a lender, an offline distributor who wants to collect and reconcile digitally, or a payment channel/app operator, this update has something exciting for you.
Setu Collect
An omni-channel bill payments platform across all categories with real-time credit alerts, instant reconciliations, and in-app notifications.
Setu Collect is an API product bundle that enables any business to collect dues against a bill from end-users through multiple payment channels, including UPI apps, Bank payment applications, and even off-line cash collection centres.
Setu Collect has a generic bill object at its core, that enables business to collect payments against bills of any kind, including EMI payments, insurance premiums, school fees, apartment maintenance charges, FASTag reloads, urban local body payments as well as B2B invoices.
How can you use it?
Setu collect is configured as a two-sided network with billers wishing to collect bills (including merchants and merchant aggregators) on one side, and payment channels who enable payments on the other side.
If you’re a payment channel operator (examples include UPI payment apps, mobile banking apps, or offline collection networks), plugging into Setu Collect will help you expand the categories of bills your users can access on your channel.
If you work with merchants (examples include ERP/CRM operators for schools and lenders), plugging into Setu collect will help you reflect your merchants’ bills across multiple payment channels, and collect payments against these bills. Our partners are currently using this feature to collect EMI payments from borrowers, and school fees from parents of students.
Setu Address
A smarter payment address with configurable rules on settling incoming payment flows.
A Setu Address is a virtual payment address/ account number, which can be configured with a settlement rule specifying how to split the balance in the underlying account, and where to settle it into. The payment address will also provide real-time credit alerts to the operator of the Address. Categories of address types enabled on Setu Collect include UPI Address, and Virtual Account Number (IMPS, NEFT, RTGS, Cheque).
How can you use it?
So far, three use cases have emerged for the Address product:
1. Lenders can use Address to create static payments addresses for borrowers to deposit loan repayments. This can save time by automating the reconciliation of outstanding balances of borrowers. Address also lets lenders share transaction success details with feet-on-street agents and tele-caller agents.
2. Lenders can launch cash-flow based lending by issuing QR codes to merchants against an Address. The merchant can then use this QR code to collect payments from customers. At the end of each day, Setu will settle the balance in the Address as per rules configured by the lender. Lenders can use these rules to deduct a portion of the merchant’s daily collections as repayment for the loan.
3. Wholesale distributors have also used our dynamic payment addresses to convert cash collections into digital collections. One of our partners is an agricultural producer distributing vegetables to retail stores. The distribution is carried out via field agents, who also collect payments from buyers at the time of delivery. Our partner wanted to convert offline cash payments they receive from their buyers into digital UPI payments. However, collecting payments into the partner’s main UPI handle would mean that the field agent would have no way of confirming the success of the transaction or the final amount transferred. The Address product solves this by generating a payment address on-the-fly (and a QR code against the address) for each bill collected by the delivery agent. When the buyer makes a payment into this address (by scanning the QR code typically), Setu generates a real-time notification which can be shared with the field agent, and can also be used for automatic reconciliation of balances.
Setu Challan
Creating a whole new category of lower risk “end-user linked” credit, by connecting verified dues (GST Postpaid, Utility bills) to lenders.
Setu Challan is an API product bundle that enables lenders to create end-use monitored loan products for their customers. For example, a lender can provide a loan to an SME exclusively to meet their GST liability. Setu Challan can help the lender ensure that the funds are paid directly into the GST authority’s account, thus eliminating the risk associated with misuse or leakage of funds. The main category of end-use loan currently enabled on Setu Challan is GST Challan.
How can you use it?
If you’re a lender providing working capital financing to your merchant customers, the Challan product can help you automate the verification of invoices and disbursement of credit against it. GST is a specific case of an invoice that can be financed in this manner.
Sounds great. Tell me more…
Read more about our products, and their API docs here.
Where do I sign up?
If any of these products pique your interest, please get in touch with our business team here.
