Technology for MSMEs: Payment service provider NTT DATA Payment Services India (erstwhile Atom Technologies), which serves over 6 million merchants in India, on Monday announced receiving in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the payment aggregator license. The company is part of the Japan-headquartered IT service provider NTT DATA Corporation and operates Japan’s largest card payment processing network CAFIS.
“This significant development brings us closer to our vision, that is, to develop NTT DATA Payment Services India as one of the top three payment service providers in the country through better services and superior products,” Dewang Neralla, CEO, NTT DATA Payment Services in a statement.
NTT DATA has an annual transaction value of Rs 1.5 lakh crore and a volume of over 10 crore transactions across India. The company serves merchants in education, government, retail, BFSI, healthcare, and other sectors with payment solutions including an online payment gateway, card swipe machine, IVR, merchant mobile apps and white-labelled solutions for banks. In 2019, NTT DATA acquired payment fintech company Atom Technologies to tap into the country’s burgeoning payments market.
Subscribe to Financial Express SME newsletter now: Your weekly dose of news, views, and updates from the world of micro, small, and medium enterprises
Importantly, the RBI had given another window to payment aggregators (PAs) to apply for a license by September 30, 2022, having a minimum net worth of Rs 15 crore as on March 31, 2022. Some of the applications received earlier were returned “as they had not complied with eligibility criteria, including the minimum net worth criterion of Rs 15 crore by March 31, 2021,” the RBI said in a notification in July this year. Keeping in view the disruption caused by the pandemic and to ensure smooth functioning of the payments ecosystem, the central bank said it decided to open another window for applicants.
A payment aggregator could be a bank or a non-bank enterprise, however, a license is required only by non-bank payment aggregators as the model involves the handling of funds while payment aggregation service is already provided by banks as part of their daily operations with merchants.
Apart from NTT DATA, other companies that have received in-principle approval for a payment aggregator license included Razorpay, 1Pay, Mswipe, Easebuzz, Innoviti, etc., as the digital payments space continues to boom in India. The market for digital payments in the country recorded around 71 billion payments in FY22, according to the data company Statista. The total transaction value is expected to grow at 22.03 per cent CAGR during the 2022-27 period resulting in a projected total amount of $53.59 billion by 2027.
Also read: Self-Reliant India fund: Rs 1,600 crore invested in 88 MSMEs, says MSME Secretary BB Swain
Get live Share Market updates and latest India News and business news on Financial Express. Download Financial Express App for latest business news.