Setu announces open source learning platform for coders & designers building fintech apps

Fintech focused software maker Setu has launched D91 labs - an open source initiative by the company to understand and enhance the financial lives of Bharat that embrace financial inclusion at the grass root level.

D91 labs aspires to become last mile understanding for developers building fintech product for the masses. It publishes open source research, insights, frameworks and component libraries for designers, developers, and other stakeholders.

Announcing D91 labs, the firm also published three posts on blogging platform Medium around designing for choices in payments, a case study depicting the plight of individuals who borrow from unorganised lenders and a survey on mobile payments in India.

These blog posts deal with several aspects of building fintech solutions for Bharat (beyond metros and top 10 cities). It offers crucial actionable insights around UX, design, development as well as the status quo of the payments industry in India.

Announcing D91 Labs - an open source initiative to bring designers, engineers, product managers together to design better for India.

Read more about what we're doing and why we're doing this! https://t.co/kX2zZe5bmv

— Nikhil Kumar (@nikhilkumarks) May 6, 2019

The brainchild of India Stack member Nikhil Kumar and ex-venture advisor to VC firm Aspada Ventures Sahil Kini - Setu- had raised $3.5 million from Lightspeed and Bharat Innovation Fund.

At a time of announcing the funding, Setu had introduced a product called Collect which allows merchants with all kinds of scale to collect recurring payments from consumers such as EMIs for loans, mutual fund SIPs, insurance premiums or housing society maintenance charges.

Developers can use Setu’s sandbox to build applications and integrate with one financial institution to test their product. The company partnered with Kotak and SBI Mutual Fund for accessing their APIs by developers without wasting time and energy.

One of the blog posts based on a survey by D91 labs found that 66% of users prefer Paytm as far as bill payment is concerned, while Google Pay was preferred for over 60% of users. When it comes to peer to peer fund transfer, Google Pay emerges as a choice for 72.5% users. For offline merchant payments, Paytm tops the chart with 70.5% plus users preferring it over other apps.

Given that there is an absence of platforms that offers actionable insights to developers who are building fintech applications for masses in India, D91 labs undoubtedly is a go-to destination for designers, coders, and other stakeholders. Further, the firm brings a lot of value by allowing developers to test their apps on APIs provided by banks.