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Fintech unicorn BharatPe on Tuesday said the company has received in-principal approval from the regulator to operate as an online payment aggregator (PA). The approval has been awarded to Resilient Payments Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BharatPe.

An online payment aggregator is a third party entity between a merchant (like e-commerce platforms) and its customers. It integrates various options of online payments together and brings them into one place for merchants, hence, bearing the load of all the integrators with various payment providers. It pools the funds received from customers (escrow) and transfers them to merchants after a certain time.

“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,” said Nalin Negi, CFO and interim CEO, BharatPe. 

The final authorisation is subject to fulfilment of certain conditions. 

“BharatPe will now commence work on fulfilling the said conditions within the prescribed timeline and launch the said online PA business upon the receipt of the final authorisation from RBI,” the company said in a statement. 

BharatPe’s revenues jumped 169% from Rs 119 crore in FY21 to Rs 321 crore in FY22. Its losses widened to Rs 5,594 crore.

Besides BharatPe, Hitachi Payment Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, also received RBI’s authorisation to act as a PA. 

“The licence will further enhance our merchant portfolio, enabling us to offer a comprehensive range of innovative and merchant friendly digital payment solutions to merchants nationwide,” said Anuj Khosla, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Business, Hitachi Payment Services. 

As per the payment solutions provider, it powers over 1 billion digital transactions annually for some of the leading banks, payment aggregators and fintech in the country. 

Who else received a PA license?

In the last few months, several fintech players including Paysharp, Worldline e-payments India, Cashfree, Open, Infibeam, Razorpay have received nods for a PA License. The RBI had mandated non-bank companies to obtain a license in order to provide PA services. 

Over 185 fintech firms, including startups, had submitted applications for the licence, the deadline for which was extended to September 2021. 

Meanwhile, Paytm Payments Services Limited was asked to resubmit the application to operate as payment aggregator.