Gone are the days when we preferred to visit a brick-and-mortar store to buy something. World has been moving online at a steady pace, more so after the pandemic. While we lay back in our comfortable sofa and order something online, we overlook the elaborate tango our “submit/pay/proceed” button sets off in the eco system. Although we are conscious about the effort delivery executives put in to deliver our favorite food on time, there is another set of people that is often ignored. Yes, I am talking about the developers that enable these beautiful systems. Our money is no more physical. India Inc. processed electronic transactions worth INR 29.5 trillion in FY2019.
With that being said, it is fair to assume that a simple barter of physical money in exchange goods is not working any more. So someone has to step up and integrate the complex cards, receiver’s banks, sender’s banks, so that you can order your Pizza seamlessly. And if you do it on a regular basis, you must have come across our today’s hero of the article, JusPay. Still unsure? Next time while you are paying for food on Swiggy through a card, lookout for the page shown in the image.
How does Online Payment Happen?
To appreciate the entire system of payments, let’s dive a little deeper on how these payments actually happen? What is brewing in the backend after all? For this, I would go ahead with the example of Swiggy. Let’s assume you are paying through HDFC bank debit card here while ordering your favorite food.
As we see, in the above example, if we remove the likes of JusPay from the system, the onus will lie on the receiver’s bank to verify all the details. That is exactly what happened back in 1990s. But as we all know, the quantum of payments processed then and now is not even comparable. Think of it this way. If you would bring someone from 1920s to 2020s, they would probably start worshipping us. We transact without moving, we fly, we talk to each other with videos despite being thousands of kilometers away. Coming back to JusPay, hope this throws a light on the indispensability of the platform.
Another drawback of banks doing it instead of third party softwares like JusPay is that banks in that case won’t be Customizable, Scalable and Standardized. There are so many banks in India. Imagine depending on the merchant and your bank account, each one of them would have to come up with it’s own version of payment gateway.
About JusPay?
The platforms that integrate merchants with banks to enable seamless payments are called payment gateways. JusPay is one such payment gateway. As per Investopedia, a payment gateway is a technology used by merchants to accept debit or credit card purchases from customers. The term includes not only the physical card-reading devices found in brick-and-mortar retail stores but also the payment processing portals found in online stores.
You can find JusPay’s software on some key online platforms like RedBus.in, Snapdeal, Freecharge, Swiggy, Amazon, Airtel, Flipkart, Big Basket etc. Company touts of processing 100mn transactions each day with a total transactions of 4.1bn till date.
Also, if you are thankful for the fact that your phone now auto fetches the OTP from messages while you are trying to make a payment, please take a moment to thank them as they have been pioneers of such innovations.
The company was founded back in 2012. The founder of the company is Vimal Kumar. Vimal has worked Amazon in the software development and later headed Bank Bazar’s IT as Chief information officer.
JusPay’s Data Breach:
While the story so far seems to be very happy, not everything is roses and sunshine here. Whenever there is money involved, there has to be crooks in the picture too. And when you are processing millions of transactions daily, you are essentially a hotbed of fraudulent activities.
About three months ago in January 2021, JusPay was a victim of a cyberattack that leaked the information of 3.5 crore users on the dark web, making this the biggest data breaches in India so far.
The statement released by JusPay after the incident and it’s interpretation below:
“Juspay was victim of a malicious and unlawful cyberattack on August 18, 2020. Our threat response system immediately detected the breach and we were able to terminate the attack. Our immediate audit post the incident narrowed the breach to an isolated system containing non-sensitive masked card primarily used for display purposes on merchant UI. While we estimate information of 35 million customers to be breached – it is important to note that customers’ full card numbers, order information, card PINs, or passwords are secure. The compromised data does not contain any transaction or order information. The claim that data of 100 Mn Indians was breached is grossly incorrect,” as per the statement.”
What JusPay is trying to say here is that although the data for 35mn people was leaked, but it was only the masked credit card numbers that you see on your e-commerce sites in the form of XXXX XXXX XXXX 4325. All other details like PINs, passwords etc. are safe.
So, while we have come a long way in making our lives easier and paying anything with a click of a button, so have these low lives who attempt to access sensitive customer information just to sell it for money.
Conclusion:
I always believe that gratitude is a powerful emotion. While some of us practice it regularly, I am sure that none of us tries to express it to the tech systems running 24×7 to make our lives simpler. So today, let’s give a heart felt ‘Arigato‘ to systems like these who bridge the gap between our Pizza and us, one transaction at a time.
What do you think about this? Am I crazy or does it make sense?
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Until next time..
This Blogpost is in association with BlogChatter’s #BlogchatterA2ZChallenge. As a part of this challenge, I write on fintech everyday for each letter of English alphabet. Read other posts here.
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