Razorpay, Phonepe, and others confront Juspay’s “white box” (10-minute trailer)

02/06/25 • 10 min

On January 20th, the online publication The Head and Tale broke the news that two of India's largest payment aggregators and gateways, Razorpay and Cashfree, were severing ties with India's largest payment orchestrator or router, Juspay.

Payment gateways are the simplest. They simply facilitate a payment transaction between a merchant's website and a bank. But because these days, we have so many ways to pay. Cards, UPI, net banking, wallets, etc. Many payment gateways also aggregate these methods and offer customers and merchants a choice.

Hence, they're payment aggregators.

Now most leading gateways are also aggregators. This includes Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU, Paytm*, etc.

The most important layer right now, and the topic of today's discussion, is orchestration or routing.

Like a conductor in an orchestra, orchestrators sit above payment gateways and payment aggregators and determine who gets to play.

What that means is when a customer is trying to do a transaction on a merchant's site, the orchestrator or router assigns it to a particular payment gateway or aggregator depending on various things like where success rates are high, who's offering competitive rates, etc.

That's what happens with large organizations like Flipkart, BigBasket, Swiggy, etc.

For instance, you must have seen when you're trying to make a transaction on any of those sites after you enter your card details; you must have seen the Juspay modal, or briefly, website appear when you're trying to enter your OTP, or it's fetching that.

That's what Juspay does.

It sits above payment aggregators and gateways, and it kind of plays this conductor role, assigning transactions to where they are most likely to succeed or where they are most competitively priced for the merchant that Juspay is operating with.

That’s the topic of today's discussion because Razorpay and Cashfree decided to stop working with Juspay.

Now that's very interesting, and it's essentially the trigger to what we’d like to think of as sort of like a much larger war which is going to break out with one set of payment aggregators on one side and the other side another set of payment aggregators, and of course, Juspay.

Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar for the discussion are Vimal Kumar, founder of Juspay; Anand Balaji, co-founder of Xflow and former India head for Stripe; and Abhishek Madan, who used to be vice president of Product at Paytm*.

Welcome to episode 28 of Two by Two.

*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.

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Additional reading:

Razorpay and Cashfree woke up and chose violence

Additional listening:

Why Stripe could not become the Stripe of India

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This is a free ‘10-minute trailer’ streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]

Hence, they're payment aggregators.

Now most leading gateways are also aggregators. This includes Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU, Paytm*, etc.

The most important layer right now, and the topic of today's discussion, is orchestration or routing.

Like a conductor in an orchestra, orchestrators sit above payment gateways and payment aggregators and determine who gets to play.

That's what happens with large organizations like Flipkart, BigBasket, Swiggy, etc.

That's what Juspay does.

That’s the topic of today's discussion because Razorpay and Cashfree decided to stop working with Juspay.

Welcome to episode 28 of Two by Two.

*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.

–

Additional reading:

Razorpay and Cashfree woke up and chose violence

Additional listening:

Why Stripe could not become the Stripe of India

–

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

Previous Episode

Are we past peak Amazon India?

Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early on

Yet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunities because they were slow to react to changing consumer behaviour.

And this losing advantage in some of their verticals makes you think, what are the other businesses where Amazon has a right to win. Is it AWS, streaming or something else? Or will they push forward to make up for the lost opportunities by pouring more money and change their fate.

What does the future hold for Amazon India? And how will the company, famed for its execution, turn things around in India?

Of course, there have been other regulatory pressures as well, which have halted them from realising their full potential in India and forced them to think outside the business model in which they usually function.

In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan bring back one of our first guests, Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services and a former ‘Amazonian’, to discuss whether Amazon has lost the e-commerce race in India. Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a breadth of subjects at the Indian School of Business, including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies, is our second guest.

And they try to uncover over the hour-and-a-half-long discussion where the next big opportunity lies for Amazon India.

Welcome to episode 23 of Two by Two.

Additional reading:

Amazon is not yet in quick commerce. But it’s already different from the pack

Amazon got rid of its largest seller only to replace it with other ‘preferred sellers’

Amazon’s Leadership Principles (recommended by Srikanth)
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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN mixed and mastered this episode.

Write to us at [email protected] and tell us what you thought of the episode, and rate the show on your favourite podcast streaming platform.

Next Episode

The future was electric cars. Until it wasn't

In 2023, two-wheelers and three-wheelers in India experienced growth of around 37% and 66%. Electric four-wheelers also promised to go down the same path because in that same year, there was a significant increase in sales of electric four-wheelers, 113%.

Now, of course, this is from a lower base, but the signs were clear.

The conventional wisdom or the narrative has been that petrol and diesel cars are going to become a relic of the past. And if you're an automaker and if you're not investing billions of dollars in developing battery technology or newer models with all of this stuff, you are seen as out of touch with reality.

Essentially, electric cars were inevitable.

In 2024, something changed. Demand and sales for electric cars have fallen all over the world. For the first time in almost 12 years, Tesla's sales dropped by 1.1%. And India is also no exception.

If you look at the 2024 numbers, in fact, until October 2024, sales of electric four-wheeler cars in India were actually declining. They had gone down if you compare year-on-year numbers for all of these months. By the end of the year, it sort of increased a little bit, which was helped by the sale of one specific model called MG Windsor and some price cuts.

But in this episode, we're going to pose two questions: Number one, why did electric cars become less attractive? And two, what will make electric cars inevitable again and by when?

Our first guest is Dr Amitabh Saran, founder and CEO of Altigreen Propulsion Labs. Saran used to work at companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Philips, NASA, and Hewlett-Packard before turning to entrepreneurship.

Our second guest is Awadhesh Jha, executive director of Glida India, formerly known as Fortum Charge and Drive India, which is a leading charging solution provider in India. In fact, if you live in Delhi, you will see Glida charging points all over Delhi.

Jha has a long history in power. He used to be a deputy director at the Central Water Commission. Also, he was the vice president of Hindustan Powerprojects Limited, where he administered hydropower development in one of the remotest parts of the country, the Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh.

Welcome to episode 24 of Two by Two.

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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with people who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]