BharatPe Obtains RBI's In-Principle Approval for Payment Aggregator License

BharatPe, India's leading financial services company for merchants, has received in-principle authorization from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as an online payment aggregator. BharatPe's subsidiary Resilient Payments was granted the license.

Payment Aggregators (PAs) are entities that facilitate e-commerce sites and merchants to accept various payment instruments from customers for completion of their payment obligations. PAs facilitate merchants to connect with acquirers.

"We are really excited to receive the in-principle approval for the Online Payment Aggregator License and are thankful to the regulators for entrusting their faith in us. At BharatPe, we have been committed to empowering offline merchants and kirana store owners in the country and have already built a network of 1 crore merchants across over 400 cities," said Nalin Negi, CFO and interim CEO, BharatPe.

"This in-principle approval will help catapult our expansion plans and enable us to reach out to millions of more unbanked and underserved merchants, provide digital payment acceptance solutions and in turn, get them to be a part of the Digital India story," Negi added.

As per the payment aggregator framework formally introduced in March 2020 by RBI, only companies approved by the central bank can acquire and offer payment services to merchants. Fintechs in the industry are on a spree to submit proposals to RBI to receive their license.

This week, Hitachi Payment Services, India's foremost end-to-end payment solutions provider, has received the in-principle authorisation from RBI​ to act as a payment aggregator.