Hey everyone!
I have long been wanting to share with you all, about my experience while working on my startup Eashmart. However, I always decided to wait till we launched. Today we are at that moment! We launched last night, with our first vendor partner.
Eashmart allows a user to make a payment at the time of delivery, by simply tapping on their phone. The vendor simply sends us a request with the amount and buyer’s phone, and we take care of the rest! We are here to end cash on delivery, and make card on delivery a free, and actually practical form of accepting payments on delivery.
It was a very nervous night for us! We were in a train coming back to Delhi, and if anything went wrong, we’d have no way to fix anything! We got our first user at about 3:30AM, aaannndd shit happened! Our app crashed on the user’s phone; and it did so seven times! The user then decided not to use the app. However, they didn’t have cash on them, and our vendor being the king of customer support, assured them that they can make the payment later 😉 (Try that sometime!)
Today, we got in touch with our user, and apologized to them for what we put them through. They were kind to forgive us, they even decided to give us a try again. We had already fixed the issue, actually we fixed it right at 4:07AM, exactly 3 minutes later, however, we could not update the app store entry.
Today we are glad to say that we have successfully completed our first transaction. I believe we were able to get the user’s support because we were upfront that we made mistake, that it was our fault that we had not tested our app fully, and that it was us they should blame for having brought them in such a situation. One more thing we did was to offer that they can choose not to use us to complete the payment, and that we’ll take care of the trouble of collecting the payment and handing it over to the vendor. This way we tried to offer a way out for the user, and also tried to not add problems for our vendor who has trusted us to take care of the most important part of a business.
If you feel like eating something late in the night, call Midnight Munchies, and ask for payment via Eashmart 😉
I’d really value your feedback!
How does it work?
When you are placing an order you tell the merchant that you will be using Eashmart to pay. Instantly you will get an invoice on your phone; If you don’t already have the app on your phone, you’ll get an SMS, with a link to the invoice. Clicking this will show you a screen with a list of your saved cards, and an option to use a new one. We immediately notify the merchant and the delivery that the payment is done.
From a user’s point of view, you don’t have to make payment beforehand, and you can enjoy the benefits of payment on delivery and cashless payment, all at the same time.
Where it works?
- Eashmart can be used for either, store or online.
- We currently support credit and debit cards only. We support VISA, MASTERCARD, and MAESTRO
- We are currently experimenting with loyalty cards too, but we want to get the card payments right first. We think that getting one thing right is the key to the killing it!
- We are not doing a pre auth. The payment happens only at time of delivery.