Infibeam Avenues gets RBI in-principle nod for payment aggregator licence

Infibeam Avenues, which operates CCAvenue, has received an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a payment aggregator (PA). It joins a list of entities who have received the in-principle approval from RBI for a PA licence.

The company said this will enable them to further expand their reach in multiple business segments for both online and offline digital transactions.

Several payment providers such as Razorpay, Pine Labs, Stripe, 1Pay, Innoviti Payments, MSwipe, and a few others have received in -principle nod from the RBI for a PA license. More players are also expected to get the central bank’s nod for a PA license.

The RBI allowed another window to PAs existing as of March 2020 to apply to the central bank for a license. PAs were asked to apply for a license by September 30, 2022.

Back in 2020, RBI issued guidelines that said only firms approved by the regulator can acquire and offer payment services to the merchants. While banks do not need separate approvals, non-bank entities offering payment aggregator services had to apply for authorisation to the RBI by June 2021, which was later extended. The central bank had, however, allowed them to continue their operations till they received communication from the regulator regarding the fate of their application.

The central bank had specified the criteria the entities have to fulfil to secure such a license and a number of firms have seen their applications being rejected while many have also got the nod from the RBI. According to some reports, about 180 applications were made to the RBI, among which a number of applications have been rejected and quite a few have been given the nod.

PAs are entities that facilitate e-commerce sites and merchants to accept various payment instruments from the customers for completion of their payment obligations without the need for merchants to create a separate payment integration system of their own.

Last month, RBI said it is now aiming to get the offline PAs under its purview to bring in regulatory synergy and convergence on data standards. The online payment aggregators were brought under the central bank’s purview by the RBI back in 2020, taking into account the important functions these intermediaries provide in the online payments space as also keeping in view their role vis-à-vis handling funds.