Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has given in-principle approval to fintech startup 1Pay Mobileware Pvt Ltd to operate as a payment aggregator. With this, 1Pay becomes one of the first companies in India to get approval from RBI for the (PA) payment aggregator license.
Founded in 2019, 1Pay is a payment aggregator that also brings transportation, logistics and the banking industry together, thus digitally unifying the Logi-Fintech space. Currently, the platform has an annualized GTV (Gross Transaction Value) of INR 8500cr plus and an annualized transaction volume of over 30 million. The startup offers payment solutions to Logistics, OEM Suppliers, OMC/Fuel Distributors, and FASTag issuers.
1Pay is backed by ex-Goldman Sachs MD Sanjiv Shah and Sanjay Gaitonde. They founded Benchmark which was India’s only AMC focused on the passive and quantitative space. Benchmark pioneered the concept of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in India
Commenting on the news, Sanjay Gaitonde said, “1Pay is creating a seamless payments platform for the unorganized sector that empowers them to accept and make digital payment. 1Pay is one of the few platforms focusing on digitally unifying the unorganized logi-fintech space. Furthermore, RBIs approval for a startup in the fintech space demonstrates the central banks’ commitment to digitally unifying the country.”
The payment aggregator framework, introduced formally in March 2020, mandates that only firms approved by the RBI can acquire and offer payment services to merchants. RBI has been strict in its evaluation of entities that have applied for the payment aggregator license. Multiple online payment gateways seeking the aggregator license came under the intense scrutiny of the central bank for – know-your-customer (KYC) related issues, past dealings with cryptocurrency exchanges and gaming apps, and for not complying with the net worth criteria that RBI had set out.