Leveraging financial digitalisation in rural India: Interview with Rohit Kumar, Founder & CEO at XPay.Life

By Puja Sharma

Founded in 2019, XPay.Life is a FinTech company that focuses on digital payments in the most remote locations of India. The Bengaluru-based company has been working and providing a comfortable experience to its consumers.

At X-Pay, the focus is on the digitisation of rural India, and its financial inclusion. For this, consumers have the facility to pay online bills of Electricity, Water, Gas, Telecom, DTH, Insurance, School Fees, Fastag, Cable TV, etc. with just one touch. These include transactions through its Android and iOS App, Website, PoS Machines, ATP Kiosks, and Mobile Vans. These vans travel to most remote locations of the country for their consumers.

After the launch of the X-Pay Life App, it has been downloaded from the Google Play store over a million times. The firm’s infrastructure is built on a BBPS system which allows smooth transactions and services. Along with this, it is connected with ICICI Bank and Bill Avenues for business continuity. For launching its UPI Channel, the company has tied up with Yes Bank. The company aids in the growth of the grass-root level by empowering village-level entrepreneurs and creating a platform that is safe and easily accessible for them. X-pay is a 360-degree solution for every kind of payment method.

Rohit Kumar, founder, and CEO of Xpay.Life has over two decades of entrepreneurial experience. An Alumni of Harvard Business School, Rohit founded the XIPHIAS group in the year 2005. He then established XPay.Life in 2019. As a confident individual with an infectious enthusiasm for technology, Rohit has taken the brand XPay.Life to new heights by successfully installing India’s leading blockchain-enabled transaction framework.

In conversation with Kumar, IBS intelligence discussed how the firm is leveraging financial digitalisation in rural India.

What products do you offer currently?

We are working towards a truly digitised and financially included India. We do this by providing services through 3 pillars. Financial inclusion services, which has the bill payment and soon to be launched UPI services through form factors like the app, website, PoS machines, and the patented Mobile van.

The mobile van is a solar-powered office or bank on wheels that travels to the doorstep of the villager and teaches financial and digital literacy to the unbanked while enabling cash transactions on our touch screen kiosks. Secondly, the merchant services where we enable entrepreneurs at a village level by allowing them to accept cash and other digital modes of transactions at the retail front thereby energizing transactions at a rural level. Thirdly as a service provider to the district cooperative banks and rural banks and through them grow the villages of India. Our focus is and will continue to be digitising India one village at a time.

What is the strategy entailing your growth in the next two years?

As the country is witnessing a strong wave of digital India, so for the next two years we will continue to focus on the digitisation of rural India by enabling financial inclusion. XPay.Life has already set up its Mobile Vans which are Bank on wheels as it has all the services which a bank provides in more than 14 states. By providing the most secure, user-friendly, and effective tools for financial transactions, XPay.life is aiming to expand its presence in the most remote locations of the country.

India can only become fully digitised if we empower our rural India. We are educating people from rural households about payments and transactions through various modes. One of them is Mobile Vans since it is convenient and easy to use for the people, we start by providing services at the doorstep and at the same time educating & informing them about digital transactions. Other than this, we have an Any Time Payment Kiosk machine specially designed for safety and convenience.

We are currently in 12 states and we will cover all the states in India in the next 1 year. Our target is to at least reach 3lac villages in the next 18 months.

With the growth of digital transactions, how are you keeping frauds in check?

XPay.Life manages the IT security audit and compliance needs of its customers regularly.  To ensure safety and keep a check on frauds, we have UPI, a cash tracking system, payment gateways, and such options for secure and smooth transactions. The platform is built-in blockchain technology which is the most secure framework available at present. All transactions are passed through an AI-based audit system to check the veracity and increase safety.

What are the current challenges faced by the company and how would you tackle them?

Since we focus on rural India, people often take time to accept that digital transactions can happen at such ease. We have made our challenge our strength and unique feature. Oftentimes, people take time to accept a change in the financial system but with continuous effort, it is possible and we are successfully doing it. By being present in villages, as a friend of the villagers, the XPay platform and its form factors become a choice partner for the transactions done by the villagers.