Indian Payment Gateway Razorpay Pauses Onboarding of Online Merchants

Razorpay has reportedly paused its onboarding of online merchants for a couple of weeks.

Moneycontrol reported Friday (Dec. 16) that the Indian payment gateway did so after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advised the firm to pause onboarding until it obtains a final payment aggregator (PA) license.

Razorpay said it expects it to take a couple of weeks to comply with a few guidelines to obtain the PA license and said this pause does not affect its existing business operations and merchants, according to the report.

The firm received in-principle approval for a PA license in July and was one of the first three companies to do so, the report said.

“As part of the process for the final authorization of our PA/PG license for which we received the in-principle approval from RBI in July, we are now required to share additional details with RBI to aid in the final license process,” a Razorpay spokesperson told Moneycontrol. “As part of this process, RBI has suggested us to temporarily withhold onboarding new online merchants till such details are submitted.”

The Razorpay spokesperson said in the report that this move has no impact on the company’s existing business operations and merchants.

“Also, we continue to onboard new businesses on other Razorpay services — RazorpayX, Corporate Card and Offline payments via Ezetap,” the spokesperson said, per the report. “Razorpay’s operations are fully compliant with all regulatory guidelines and the company continues to be in touch with RBI for the next steps.”

Razorpay did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

This report comes months after Razorpay made acquisitions to expand its range of services.

In September, the firm accelerated its push into loyalty and rewards management by acquiring the payments-linked loyalty and engagement startup PoshVine.

Headquartered in India, PoshVine offers payments-linked loyalty and engagement solutions to banks, payment networks and businesses.

A month earlier, in August, Razorpay tapped the offline, in-person payments market — which still accounts for the majority of electronic money movement in India — by buying offline payments firm Ezetap.

Ezetap enables point-of-sale (POS) and on-delivery payments. The move is intended to put Razorpay on track to become one of the biggest omnichannel payments services for businesses in India, the company said at the time.

Beyond these two acquisitions, Razorpay also acquired IZealiant Technologies, Curlec, TERA Finlabs, Opfin and Thirdwatch.