Payment gateway Cashfree Payments gets RBI nod for payment aggregator license

Cashfree Payments has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the payment aggregator (PA) as well as prepaid payment instrument (PPI) licenses, according to sources aware of the development.

Founded in 2015 by IIIT Hyderabad alumnus Akash Sinha and IIT Kharagpur graduate Reeju Datta, Cashfree Payments processes transactions worth $20 billion annually in India.

With over 100,000 merchants on its platform, the company's offerings include a payment gateway, a split payment solution for marketplaces, Application Programming Interface (API) for banking and Auto Collect which enables merchants to collect payments from customers via various payment modes.

Cashfree did not comment on the development. Entrackr was the first to report on this development.

Other players who have received RBI's in-principal approval for the license include Razorpay, Pine Labs, Innoviti, Easebuzz, Stripe, MSwipe, NTT Data Payment Services and 1Pay Mobileware.

In a new set of guidelines issued in March 2020, the RBI had mandated that all PAs be authorised by the central bank. For this, the regulator instructed non-bank companies offering PA services to apply for authorisation by June 30, 2021, which was later pushed to September 30, 2021.

The PPI license will allow Cashfree to provide wallet services, but the company has not disclosed its plans on that front.