Infibeam Avenues, the operator of CCAvenue, has received an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a payment aggregator.
“Under this provision, the fintech major will get a substantial boost to further expand its reach in multiple business segments for both online and recently launched offline digital transactions,” the Gandhinagar-based company said in a press release.
“As a leading digital payment player, Infibeam has the highest portfolio of payment options for merchants with over 200 plus multi -currency payment options in India alone with run rate of 4 lakh crore annually across the platform,” it said. “Given its wide network across industry verticals and quantum of transaction processing volume (TPV), Infibeam’s flagship brand CCAvenue is well placed to leverage the new role as a payment aggregator and help bring a greater number of micro-entrepreneurs under the fold of e-commerce”.
In March this year, the RBI issued a framework under which payment aggregators are mandated to obtain a license for acquiring merchants and providing them with digital payment acceptance solutions. This was done primarily to ensure the safety of merchants and consumers.
According to RBI, payment aggregators 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. This is made possible by facilitating merchants to connect with acquirers. In the process, the aggregators receive payments from customers, pool and transfer them on to the merchants after a time period.
“It’s a vital development as it energises our vision and mission to build India’s biggest digital payment infrastructure company…With regulators entrusting faith in us, we promise to ourselves to make all Indian kiranas and merchants Digital, Credible & Bankable,” Infibeam Avenues managing director Vishal Mehta said.
Other players that have received the RBI’s in-principal nod for payment aggregator licences include Pine Labs, Innoviti, Easebuzz, MSwipe, Razorpay, Stripe, MSwipe, NTT Data Payment Services and 1Pay Mobileware. Several other players including Swiggy, Zomato, Google Pay, MobiKwik’s Zaakpay have also reportedly applied for payment aggregator licences.
