Infibeam, the Ahmedabad-based ecommerce company, has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to launch business-to-business payment services, according to sources. Businesses will be able to pay utility and service bills through its CCAvenue payments platform.
The company is preparing to integrate the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) into the platform. A person familiar with the matter said that with CCAvenue and BBPS both in place, the Infibeam wallet could handle utility bill payments as well as private bill payments.
In its Q2 FY18 filings with the BSE, Infibeam reported a net profit of $3.3 Mn (INR 21.6 Cr) for the quarter ended September 30, 2017, up 117% year on year. Consolidated revenue rose 76% to $30.8 Mn (INR 201.6 Cr), from $17.55 Mn (INR 114.7 Cr) a year earlier. The company attributed the growth to Infibeam Web Services (IWS), which grew 92% year on year with a 38% EBITDA margin. IWS contributed 61% of revenue in Q2 FY18, against 29% in Q2 FY17.
CCAvenue is a payment aggregator with a merchant base of 100K as of February 2017. It supports credit and debit cards, net banking, IMPS, prepaid instruments, EMI options and UPI. Infibeam invested about $6.7 Mn (INR 45 Cr) in CCAvenue in May 2016. In February 2017, it invested $22.4 Mn to acquire a further 7.5% stake and signed an MOU to merge the fintech company into its operations.
The B2B payments segment in India remains limited, even as digital payments gain traction. The country has more than 48 Mn SMEs, which together account for nearly 40% of GDP. Globally, the B2B market records annual transaction values of more than $1 Tn.
