RBI shows flexibility on fintech payment licence clearances in 2025

The Reserve Bank of India has stepped up regulatory approvals for fintech companies over the past year, and it has issued multiple payment related licences to a wider set of firms, with several securing full stack authorisation across categories in 2025.

In recent months, RBI approved online, offline and cross border payment aggregation for around half a dozen companies. These include Paytm, Razorpay, Easebuzz, PayU, Pine Labs and Airpay. With these clearances, the firms are authorised to offer a full stack of payment aggregator services across ecommerce transactions, in store merchant payments and cross border payment flows.

On December 17, Paytm received RBI approval for offline and cross border payment aggregation, which completed its set of payment aggregator licences. Razorpay secured its cross border payment aggregator licence after earlier approvals for online and offline payments. Easebuzz, PayU and Pine Labs were also permitted by RBI to offer online, offline and cross border payment services. Airpay joined the list after it received authorization across all three segments.

These approvals come under the RBI’s updated 2025 Master Directions on Payment Aggregators, which classify non bank entities into online, offline and cross border categories, each with defined compliance, capital, escrow and governance requirements. The framework is aimed at providing regulatory clarity while balancing innovation with stronger consumer protection and financial system stability.

The faster approvals in 2025 differ from RBI’s earlier approach, when many payment aggregator applications were returned or kept pending due to compliance issues. Between 2021 and 2023, RBI increased scrutiny around escrow norms, governance and data localisation. During this period, companies such as Razorpay faced temporary restrictions while their applications were reviewed, while Paytm received approvals in stages across categories.

In a media statement Easebuzz MD & CEO Rohit Prasad had said the full-stack approval reflects the company’s compliance-led approach to building scalable and secure payment infrastructure. Razorpay co-founder Shashank Kumar added that the cross border licence strengthens regulatory compliance and supports Indian businesses in global transactions. Paytm has not issued a founder level comment, though filings describe the approval as enabling expanded merchant payment services.

In a similar move, RBI granted payment aggregator licences to Mswipe for both online and offline transactions. The licence allows Mswipe to offer payment aggregation services across digital and in-store merchant use cases.

Along with these full stack approvals, RBI issued several other key licences to fintech and payments focused companies during the same period. Infibeam Avenues received approval to operate as an offline payment aggregator. Policybazaar’s PB Pay and MobiKwik’s Zaakpay received authorization to function as online payment aggregators. In the cross border payments space, Skydo, Wise, EximPe, PayPal and Worldline received RBI approvals to operate as cross border payment aggregators.

Separately, RBI granted approval to Junio and Infibeam to issue prepaid payment instruments, which added another regulated entity to the consumer payments segment.

The approvals indicate a broader expansion of licensed players across different layers of the payments value chain. Compared to earlier years, the pace of regulatory clearances has increased, with multiple firms securing either full stack or category specific authorisations within a short period.