Payment service provider NTT DATA Payment Services India, a subsidiary of Japanese major NTT Data Corporation, on Monday said it has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the Payment Aggregator (PA) license.
The Mumbai-headquartered company is the latest player in the space to receive approval after MSwipe, Razorpay, Pine Labs, Stripe, Innoviti, and 1Pay.
PAs are banks or non-bank entities that facilitate ecommerce 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.
Since payment aggregation service is already provided by the banks as part of their daily operations with merchants, they do not require a license. However, non-bank PAs require authorisation from the RBI.
Formerly known as Atom Technologies Ltd, NTT DATA provides payment services to both offline and online merchants via point of sale, payment gateway, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), mobile applications, wallets, BNPL, and white-labelled solutions.
It claims to have an annual transaction value of Rs 1,50,000 crore and a volume of over 10 crore transactions across India, with over 6 million merchants onboard.
“This significant development also brings us closer to our vision, that is, to develop the company as one of the top three payment service providers in the country through better services and superior products,” said Dewang Neralla, CEO at NTT DATA Payment Services.
NTT DATA is a part of the $112 billion NTT Group, which is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan where it is a market leader in IT and Business Services. The group has a significant presence across Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia, and operates CAFIS, Japan’s largest card payment processing network.
In May, The company raised Rs 90 crores from its parent company to fund its next phase of growth, amidst the expanding digital payments landscape in India. With the new funds, NTT is looking to foray into newer segments such as the Bharat Bill Payment Operating Unit, apart from exploring potential Merger and Acquisition opportunities. The company is also initiating cross-border commerce, thereby, connecting India and global customers.
About 185 fintech enterprises and startups applied for licenses last year, of which a majority were rejected by the RBI owing to tight scrutiny and prerequisites.
Recently, the RBI had given another window to PAs to apply for a license by September 30, 2022, having a minimum net worth of Rs 15 crore as on March 31, 2022. Some of the applications received earlier were returned “as they had not complied with eligibility criteria, including the minimum net worth criterion,” the RBI had said in a notification in July this year.
