Mobikwik-owned Zaakpay gets RBI's in-principle nod to operate as payment aggregator

Some of India's top payment gateway companies are also waiting for green signal from the RBI to onboard new merchants to their platform

Fintech firm Mobikwik's payment gateway arm, Zaakpay has received in-principle authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a payment aggregator (PA), which will allow the firm to onboard new merchants.

"The opportunity to support more businesses inspires us to continuously enhance the capabilities of our platform. This development reinforces our commitment to further develop MobiKwik into a comprehensive digital banking services platform," Upasana Taku, co-founder and COO of MobiKwik said in a statement.

The in-principle nod comes two years after Mobikwik filed an initial application with the RBI. In 2021, Mobikwik applied for the PA license for Zaakpay to RBI, however, the same was rejected and the firm re-applied in October 2022.

This comes at a time when India's top payment gateway companies are yet to receive a green signal from the RBI to onboard new merchants to their platform.

In December of 2022, Fintech unicorn Razorpay, one of the country’s leading payment gateways paused the onboarding of new online merchants to comply with a communication that it received from the RBI.

Fintech firms Paytm, PayU and Cashfree are yet to receive final approval.