RBI grants payment aggregator licence to Mswipe Technologies

Mswipe Technologies CEO Ketan Patel.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has granted the payment aggregator (PA) licence to digital payments platform Mswipe Technologies, which joins the likes of Zomato, Decentro, Zoho, Juspay  and Razorpayto get the regulator's nod to offer the service.

The licence comes almost two years after the company received an in-principle nod in the middle of 2022.

"The payment aggregator licence solidifies the company's objective to enhance its suite of offerings while delivering secure, efficient, and user-friendly payment technology to banking partners, enterprises, and merchants across categories," the company said in a statement on February 19.

A payment aggregator, or PA, licence allows companies to offer payment services to merchants (online businesses or e-commerce firms) by accepting payment instruments from customers. PAs pool the funds received from customers and transfer them to merchants after a certain time period.

Mswipe, which started out in the offline payments space with point of sale (PoS) devices, has been looking to penetrate into the online category with its own gateway, particularly targeting MSMEs.

With a merchant network of more than 6 lakh, the fintech has been looking to diversify its revenue streams with sound box and loan collection services (to banks and NBFCs), both launched a year back.

The company claims to have installed over 3 lakh sound boxes and aims to touch a million by the end of 2024. For collection business, it has tied up with 15 partners, clocking a 20 percent month-on-month revenue growth.

The fintech firm recently took a pause on merchant lending operations, as it looks to focus on its core payments business. It now plans to operate as a digital service provider (DSA) and not lend from its own book, co-founder Ketan Patel has told Moneycontrol.

Mswipe competes with Razorpay, PayU, Pine Labs, CCAvenues, BharatPe, BillDesk and new entrants like Paytm and PhonePe in the offline payments space.

Patel said MSwipe, which has raised over $107 million from investors like Falcon Edge, Matrix Partners India, B Capital, Epiq Capital and DSG Growth Partners, is EBITDA positive since FY22.