5 tech strong companies disrupting the payments space in India

New Delhi: India's digital payments industry, which is currently worth around USD 200 billion, is expected to grow five-fold to reach USD 1 trillion by 2023, as per a recent report by Swiss financial services holding company Credit Suisse predicts.

The payments segment has also been the most funded within the Indian fintech landscape, riding on the wave of demonetisation. Understanding the gaps and potential in the payments landscape in India, technology strong companies are disrupting the space by tapping into India's vast and underserved market.

Following are 5 innovative payment companies which are striving towards making Indian consumers embrace the use of mobile payments:

ToneTag:

A global technology solutions provider, this company uses proprietary Software Development Kit (SDK) that encodes data into sounds. ToneTag is making mobile payments as accessible and frictionless as possible by removing any sort of hardware dependency and by enabling all devices to make payments. ToneTag has reached over 50 million consumers across the globe with its cutting-edge Sound Wave technology-based systems and empowered 3, 10,000 merchants. Backed by Amazon, Mastercard, 3one4 capital and Amensa, ToneTag is built to bridge the last mile in financial inclusion and deliver simple cashless payments.

Paytm:

Paytm is India's largest payments company that offers multi-source and multi-destination payment solutions. It offers comprehensive payment solutions to over 8 million merchants and allows consumers to make payments from any bank account to any bank account at 0% fee.

Google Tez:

Tez is a mobile payments service by Google, targeted at users in India. It operates atop the Unified Payments Interface, developed by the National Payments Corporation of India. It can be used where UPI payments are accepted. Tez works on the vast majority of India's smartphones (with apps for both Android and iOS) with the Android app supporting English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu with more languages coming soon.

PhonePe:

PhonePe is a Fin-Tech company headquartered in Bangalore, India. Founded in December 2015, it provides an online payment system based on Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is a new process in electronic funds transfer launched by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). It is licensed by the Reserve Bank of India for issuance and operation of a Semi-Closed Prepaid Payment system.

WhatsApp Pay:

WhatsApp's payment gateway is based on the unified payments interface (UPI) of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), cutting out the cumbersome intermediary step of loading money onto a wallet. Instead, users can transact directly from their bank accounts using a virtual ID. The Facebook-owned messaging app has its eye on India's flourishing e-payments pie, slated to grow five-fold by 2023 to USD 1 trillion, according to investment bank Credit Suisse.