Customers are increasingly preferring to pay through EMIs while buying high-value consumer items, as affordability has become a key factor in the post-pandemic scenario, payments solution provider Ezetap said on Thursday.
Buying ability of consumers across the country has been significantly reduced due to the pandemic.
They are either avoiding a single big payment or entirely skipping to buy any new item, Ezetap said.
This has impacted sales across brands and created a vast need for affordable solutions for customers across different sectors.
Ezetap has recorded a steep increase of 220 per cent in the transactional volume of equated monthly instalments (EMI) in July 2021, compared to February 2020.
EMI volume as part of total transactions has increased to 18 per cent in the mobile and consumer durables segment, compared to 9 per cent in the pre-pandemic period of March 2020, it said.
"This indicates a growing inclination of consumers towards affordability solutions, which help increase their purchasing power.
"This also indicates that EMI or affordability presents a massive opportunity for brands to grow their sales across diverse product segments," it added.
Delhi led metro cities with an increase of 258 per cent in total EMI volume followed by Bengaluru, clocking a growth of 206 per cent.
There has been a significant increase in the adoption of EMI transactions in non-metro cities with a combined contribution of 59 per cent in the total EMI volumes.
Ahmedabad and Pune registered growth figures of 230 per cent and 210 per cent, respectively.
"This shows that affordability solutions play a positive role in impacting sales...This may be partially attributed to the fact that a large portion of the working population have moved back to their hometowns due to work from home models, and have contributed to EMI sales in their respective hometowns" it added.
According to Ezetap, a surge in debit card EMIs is one of the main reasons behind the steep increase in such transactions and it has increased significantly with nearly 25 per cent contribution in the total EMI volumes.
Through a tie-up with several banks, Ezetap offers instant EMIs via credit and debit card.
The average ticket size of EMI transactions recorded by Ezetap has increased from Rs 18,000 in February 2020, to Rs 32,000 in July 2021.
In a move to expand the benefits of EMIs, Ezetap has also tied up with ZestMoney to provide NBFC EMIs.
Another factor for large-scale uptake of EMIs is no-cost EMIs and vouchers available to customers by various brands. Nearly 50 per cent of Ezetap EMI transaction volume can be attributed to no-cost brand EMIs, it said.
On the mobile and consumer durable space, there is at least one card offer being rolled out by various brands to drive more sales.
Ezetap has also partnered with Xiaomi to provide EMIs to customers.
Customers are avoiding bulk payments and preferring affordable payment options to reduce the monetary burden, and some non-metro cities have growth of over 200 per cent in EMI transactions, Byas Nambisan, CEO, Ezetap, said.
"We have been able to reduce the transaction time by nearly 80 per cent and eliminate the manual errors with EMI integrated into the merchant's billing POS.
"We will continue our efforts to provide the retail businesses with robust and integrated Buy Now Pay Later solutions, like EMIs, to improve the purchasing power of their end customers," he said.
Ezetap has forged tie-ups with banks such as Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank, State Bank of India, American Express, Yes Bank and ICICI Bank.
