BillDesk, Amazon Pay & Adyen Get Cross-Border Payment Aggregator Licence From RBI

Fintech startup BillDesk, Amazon Pay India, and global payments major Adyen have received the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval to operate as cross-border payment aggregators.

While BillDesk’s IndiaIdeas.com Limited received the licence for both exports and imports on July 29, the other two received the nod on July 25. Amazon Pay and Adyen India have received the central bank’s approval for import-only cross-border payment aggregator (PA) licence. 

Commenting on the development, a spokesperson of Amazon Pay said, “We are excited to have received RBI approval for operating cross-border payment aggregator – import transactions (PA-CB-I). It reaffirms our commitment to RBI to drive a seamless and inclusive payment ecosystem, and empowering merchants with innovative payment solutions that are secure, convenient, and accessible.”

With this, the trio has joined Cashfree Payments in the list of companies that have cross-border PA licence. 

For the uninitiated, the licence allows fintech and payment solutions companies to offer payment services to users for exports or imports. There are three types of cross border PA licences – export only PA-CB (PA-CB-E), import only PA-CB (PA-CB-I), and export and import PA-CB (PA-CB-E&I). 

The development comes nearly a year after the RBI, in October last year, directed fintech startups to seek PA licence for processing online cross-border transactions for the import and export of goods and services.

Under the current mandates, applicants have to register with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND) to receive authorisation for processing such payments. Additionally, they are required to maintain a minimum net worth of INR 15 Cr when applying for the licence. This threshold will increase to INR 25 Cr post March 2026.

Fintech startups offering such services will have to discontinue their platform if they fail to comply with these net-worth mandates by July 31, 2024, as per the central bank. 

Earlier this month, Cashfree Payments became the first entity to receive the payment aggregator licence for cross-border payments. 

This comes at a time when the central bank has been on a spree to grant payment aggregator licence to applicants. Since December last year, the central bank has greenlit the PA applications of more than 20 fintech startups including Groww, Juspay, Decentro, CRED, Amazon Pay, among others.