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Neobanking platform Open has received the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval for a payment aggregator gateway. The in-principle licence comes a few months after RBI’s strong regulatory crackdown on fintech firms, which were lending through prepaid payment instruments (PPIs).

The Bengaluru-based fintech platform also offers credit cards to businesses, among other banking products. Open also received RBI’s approval on a cross-border payment product, earlier this year.

“We are delighted to receive the in-principle approval from RBI for our payment aggregator licence and will help us in enhancing our existing product capabilities and innovate new solutions to automate finances for millions of SMEs and small businesses in the country,” said Anish Achuthan, Co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Open Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

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Started in August 2017 by former PayU executives Anish and Mabel Chacko, and Deena Jacob, who was heading finance at Tapzo, Open is a neobanking platform focussed on small businesses and enabling them to manage cash flows, automate accounting and get easy access to the credit line. The platform claims SMEs can easily collect, send, and reconcile payments, manage payroll and expenses, automate accounting, and avail credit to grow their business.

As of May 2022, the platform has more than 2.3 million SMEs as its customers and processes over $30 billion in annualised transactions. It claims to be adding over 100,000 SMEs every month.

Open has raised over $190 million, in total fundraise, from Temasek, Trifecta Capital and 3one4 Capital, among others. The platform currently competes with other venture-backed neobanks including Jitendra Gupta-founded Jupiter, Alpha Wave-backed Fi Money, and Accel-backed Niyo Solutions.