IaaS platforms to simplify compliance and reduce risks in card issuance

By Puja Sharma

Cashfree Payments, the payments, and API banking solutions company, announced an industry report titled ‘IaaS: New-Age Payments Solutions through Card Issuing-as-a-Service’. The report proposes a new model which allows a regulated approach for bank-fintech partnerships and API-driven innovation via Issuing-as-a-Service (IaaS).

The report explores the IaaS landscape in India. Commencing with the technology underlying it, the paper dives into the different forms of card APIs and the functions they enable – like creating, loading, or blocking a card. It introduces various players involved in card issuance and the role of an IaaS platform in easing various integrations for businesses. The report also outlines the benefits of IaaS for specific industries including such as e-commerce players, marketplaces, FinTech companies, large corporates, the logistics industry, and the gig economy.

According to the report, IaaS is witnessing a demand across industries with new use cases emerging rapidly to fulfill the underserved needs of various customer segments. For FinTechs, IaaS for cards provides a plug-n-play, flexible model for easier experimentation. With digital payments becoming a compulsion, varied existing banks have begun leveraging IaaS infrastructure to enable seamless card issuance for their customers in much lower time, than building the entire infrastructure in-house. IaaS also finds use-cases for E-commerce and marketplace companies in the form of credit and prepaid cards. Large corporates and Enterprises are starting to adopt card issuance to mitigate the challenges of complex manual processes for expense management, sales incentive payouts, and contract worker payroll among other use cases.

Also, a large number of individuals in semi-urban and rural areas have deposits in cooperative societies, where access to online banking, debit cards, etc. is limited. In such scenarios, FinTpaymtech companies facilitate prepaid and debit card issuance for co-operative societies and banks to enable online and POS card transactions for customers of co-operative societies, thereby driving financial inclusion. Another key emerging use case for credit card issuance for FinTechs in collaboration with banking partners is in facilitating working capital credit for MSMEs.

Akash Sinha, CEO, and Co-Founder, of Cashfree Payments, said, “We are very excited to launch our whitepaper on IaaS, which forms the next step in the evolution of the BaaS model. It will allow modern businesses to adopt innovative, personalised, and customer-friendly solutions for their card issuance needs. This whitepaper report delves deep into multiple aspects including the underlying technology, benefits, and regulatory environment. We believe regulation has a key role to play in the card issuance space and its financial inclusion imperative and look forward to furthering supportive steps from the regulator. ”

With over 50% market share among payment processors, Cashfree Payments today leads the way in bulk disbursals in India with its product Payouts. Recently, India’s largest lender, SBI invested in Cashfree Payments, further underscoring the company’s role in building a robust payments ecosystem. Cashfree Payments works closely with all leading banks to build their core payments and banking infrastructure that helps power the company’s products and is also integrated with major platforms such as Shopify, Wix, Paypal, Amazon Pay, Paytm, and Google Pay. Apart from India, Cashfree Payments products are being used in eight other countries including the USA, Canada, and UAE.