Open, a neo-banking fintech, has received in principle approval from the regulatory authority, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), for a Payment Aggregator Gateway (PA/PG) license.
The platform offers an all-in-one finance platform for SMEs and small businesses to automate their finances. Earlier this year, it received the go-ahead from the RBI for its cross-border payments product after completing the test phase of the second cohort under the RBI’s regulatory sandbox.
Earlier in March 2020, the RBI released the payment aggregator framework, which stated that all payment gateways are required to obtain a license to acquire merchants and offer payment services to merchants.
Open’s co-founder and CEO, Anish Achuthan, said, “We have a very proactive regulator who has played a major role in making India one of the most advanced fintech ecosystems in the world by introducing regulations and frameworks that benefit everyone in the ecosystem.”
Most importantly, he added, is building confidence among the end consumers to adopt digital payments and banking, whether it’s tokenisation, account aggregation, payment aggregator license, or the RBI sandbox.
In May 2022, Open raised its Series D round and became the 100th unicorn from India. Open is backed by global investors like IIFL Finance, Temasek, Google, Visa, Tiger Global, Beenext, Recruit Strategic Partners, and 3one4 Capital, among others, and has raised over $190 million in funding to date.
Founded in 2017, Open started as a neo-banking platform that aimed to empower SMEs, startups, and freelancers to manage everything from banking to automated accounting, bookkeeping, expense management, compliance, and payroll on one single platform.