Sequoia-backed fintech Aspora will allow Indian expatriates to pay bills in their home country

FinTech platform powered by Sequoia Asporawhich allows Indian expatriates to send money to India, is launching a new feature for users to pay bills. This means that Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) can pay utility bills or recharge their mobile prepaid plans for their families.

Until now, users had to either transfer money to their Indian accounts or ask someone to process bills on their behalf, the startup said. The other option was for them to use their foreign cards and try to pay bills but face high fees and failed payments.

Aspora has connected to the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), which handles bill payments in India, using Yes Bank’s local pipeline. Through this system, I have been able to pay over 22 lakh bills in India, ranging from electricity providers like BSES and BESCOM, broadband providers like Jio and Airtel, and loan payments to major banks.

The startup said it does not charge any fees for these payments, and users get the best exchange rates to pay the bill directly in the foreign currency.

“For millions of Indians living abroad, paying bills in India has always been unnecessarily complicated – including transfers, delays and double fees. Aspora has now solved this widespread problem with the click of a button,” Aspora founder and CEO Parth Garg told TechCrunch in a recent phone interview.

Paying bills may reduce conversions, but only by 4% to 5% of total conversions, Garg said. Garg believes that giving users the ability to pay bills will create stickiness in the long term.

“Today, the goal of any Neo Bank is to try to get more and more transactions on your app. With money transfers, people used to use the app once or twice a month. And because of this new bill payment system. The new feature increases the speed on our platform and makes our users visit the platform frequently,” Garg said.

Aspora has been testing the feature with a few thousand users for several weeks now, and has seen positive results, he said. The startup noted that mobile recharges were a big use case that emerged from this testing. BBPS does not support some categories, such as mobile recharges or credit card payments for foreign payers. That’s why Apsora has partnered with an international mobile phone recharging company Ding To facilitate these transactions.

The feature is available to customers in the UK, and the company plans to make it available to users in the US and UAE soon.

In June, Aspora was raised $50 million in Series B funding at a $500 million valuationLed by Sequoia. Other investors such as Greylock, Hummingbird, Quantum Light Ventures, and Y Combinator also contributed to the round. The company has raised more than $99 million in funding to date. The startup opened its services in July to non-resident Indians in the US market, which represents the largest market for internal remittances in India, with Nearly 28% market share according to the country’s central bank.

Aspora has now reached 800,000 customers, who have transacted $4 billion and saved $25 million in transfer fees, according to the company.

Aspora aims to launch NRE (Non-Resident Offshore) accounts to allow users to manage foreign income and NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary) accounts to allow users to manage income earned in India next year.