PayU, the global online payments service provider wholly owned by Prosus, has received in-principal authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a payments aggregator after a 15-month wait.
This will allow the fintech to resume onboarding new merchants and follows a directive from the RBI in December 2022 that affected a number of operators, including PayU. It was then reportedly asked to reapply for its licence in January 2023 - with a complex corporate structure said to be one of the contributing factors - though it continued to service existing merchants.
PayU enables businesses to collect online and offline payments across 150+ payment modes. The Netherlands-based group was founded in 2002 and views India as a major growth opportunity, given that the world's most populous country also posted GDP growth in excess of 8% in the fourth quarter of 2023.