In a statement, BharatPe, a fintech platform, said that it had been granted preliminary approval by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to function as an online payment aggregator (PA). Company officials announced that their wholly-owned subsidiary, Resilient Payments Private Ltd., had received an agreement-in-principle approval (BharatPe).
The approval from RBI follows a number of high-profile exits at the Sequoia Capital & Tiger Global-backed company, which has been embroiled in controversy since last year. It has filed a lawsuit against Ashneer Grover, the company’s former co-founder, alleging that Grover stole money from the company. Last year, in March, Grover was removed from his position.
The Payment Aggregator Framework:
The role of payment aggregators is to make it easier for online retailers and marketplaces to collect payments from customers using a wide variety of payment types. There is no requirement for retailers to develop their own payment integration infrastructure.
Only companies recognized by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may acquire as well as
provide merchants with payment services after the payment aggregator framework’s official rollout in March 2020. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been quite picky about who gets a payment aggregator license.
The RBI scrutinized numerous online payment gateways that had applied for the aggregator license for a variety of reasons, including problems with know-your-customer (KYC) procedures, ties to cryptocurrency exchanges & gambling applications, and failure to meet the minimum net worth requirement.
A number of fintech companies, including Razorpay, Pine Labs, Open, Cahfree, and 1Pay, have recently acquired PA permission from the RBI. More than 185 fintech companies and startups had applied for permission to act as payment aggregators.
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