Overview

With the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for contactless systems has increased multifold. Even with the world getting back to normal, contactless systems continue to grow. This is because its advantages are beyond just the prevention of the spreading of viruses. Payments are an integral part of any person's day-to-day life, be it buying groceries or selling your business' product. The use of contactless systems in the payments world has increased multifold in recent years with the advent of `Unified Payments Interface` (UPI), the government's support for online systems, and the current Covid Pandemic.

1 Customer provides the payment details to the billing counter. 

2 Request goes from the billing counter to the client-server. 

3,4 client-server sends the customer details and gets a link for the payment ● 5 Exotel gets a whatsapp request from the client server 

6 Customer’s device receives the message with the payment details ● 7 Payment gateway receives the payment 

8 Client-server receives the payment confirmation details 

9 Client server sends the receipt via Exotel 

10. Customer’s device receives the receipt. 

Case Study

Picture this - Pallavi walks into a store, picks up what she wants, and walks to the payments counter. On giving her phone number to the cashier, she receives a WhatsApp message with the items she had picked out and the total amount she owes. Pallavi clicks it and is redirected to a payment gateway. She quickly makes the payment using the payment method of her choice - UPI. If it’s an image, Whatsapp can automatically look for a QR code and recommend WhatsApp UPI payment.

Once that succeeds, she receives another WhatsApp message with another link. When she clicks this, she can see the invoice for her purchase. She picks up her items and walks out of the store like a boss.

Pre-requisites

• Every customer needs to have a phone with an internet connection
• For the WhatsApp use-case, every end user needs to have a WhatsApp account associated with their number
• The end user will need to have a bank account and have their credentials handy to be able to pay using net banking or a UPI ID to be able to make the payment 
• If they choose to use the UPI ID option, they will need to have the UPI app on their phone or have access to the phone that has the UPI app with the ID provided
• A full Exotel Account with enough credits and API keys to be able to use the SMS and WhatsApp APIs.

Advantages

• Saving paper - The need for a physical bill is removed with contactless billing. The bill will be sent in the form of a link to your WhatsApp chat 
• Easy Access - The need to save the physical copy of the bill safely is over. The link with the bill will permanently have the information required about your transaction.
• Smooth Experience - Invoicing happens immediately after payment, instead of you having to show proof of payment and then the manual process of billing

FAQs

• My customer doesn’t want to receive message on Whatsapp, can we send SMS instead.
  • Yes, as per the use case, SMS can also be sent. However, in that case, payment link has to be sent to the customer instead of the QR code. 

• Can we send a normal SMS instead of WhatsApp for bills and receipts in case the WhatsApp charges are high?
  • Yes. In that case, instead of QR code, a payment link will be sent to the customers. 

• Is it only restricted to QR code on Whatsapp. Can we send payment links instead
  • Yes, payment links can be sent on Whatsapp as per the tenant’s need. 

• Are the Whatsapp and SMS use cases mixed in any way?
  • No, depending on the tenant’s requirement, only Whatsapp or SMS should be triggered.