Pine Labs-owned Setu launches UPI-focused payments platform

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Setu, an API infrastructure provider owned by Pine Labs, has partnered with Axis Bank to launch a UPI-focused payments platform—UPISetu-- for businesses and developers.

The platform supports a wide range of UPI products, from basic QR code payments to other collection modes like UPI Autopay, EMI, and Third-Party Validation or TPV service. It also claims to have advanced functionalities like brand and bank offers, advanced dispute resolution, instant cashbacks, refunds—all provided via APIs.

“As ‘Credit on UPI’ gains momentum and there exists a pressing need to drive payment transaction success rates, UPISetu will be a game-changing launch for the ecosystem. We believe the world will increasingly be UPI-first thanks to the pioneering efforts of NPCI in India and overseas,” said B Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs.

The development falls in line with the growing popularity of UPI as a prominent payment method and the uses cases built on the same.

Unified payments interface (UPI) has crossed the milestone of processing 500 million transactions on a daily basis for a couple of times in August.

UPI’s integration with credit cards, wallets, credit lines points to an increasingly UPI-first world where businesses would need a unified platform to cater to the rising adoption among customers, the company notes.

"UPISetu addresses this need by providing a dedicated platform that leverages UPI's full potential to deliver latest from NPCI, fastest to the market," it said.

Founded in 2018 by Sahil Kini and Nikhil Kumar, Setu is an application programming interface (API) infrastructure provider that offers services across bill payments, savings, credit and payments.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has given the company the licence to operate as an account aggregator.

The Bengaluru-based firm, which was acquired by payments service provider Pine Labs for around $70 million in 2022, works closely with banks, insurance companies, lending firms, AMCs, other financial institutions for the financial architecture integrations.

Commenting on the launch, Sanjeev Moghe, President & Head - Cards & Payments, Axis Bank, said, “Our partnerships with Setu and Pine Labs reinforce our commitment to the digitization of merchant ecosystem. Furthermore, our provision of scalable, cloud-hosted infrastructure to our merchant partners highlights our dedication to offering reliable, innovative, and industry-leading business solutions in the UPI space.”

In May, Setu unveiled a large language model (LLM) called 'Sesame' specifically designed for the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sectors in collaboration with homegrown AI research firm Sarvam AI.

The fintech firm recently appointed former executive at SAP India, Anand Raisinghani, as the company’s new chief executive officer (CEO) after Sahil Kini stepped down.