Infibeam Avenues surges 20% after getting payment aggregator licence

Shares of Infibeam Avenues Ltd., the operator of CCAvenue payment gateway, jumped 20% on Friday after it received an approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a payment aggregator.

The fintech company's stock surged 19.72% to ₹17.30 on the National Stock Exchange.

With the payment aggregator licence, the company will get a substantial boost to further expand its reach in multiple business segments for both online and recently launched offline digital transactions, Infibeam Avenues says in a stock exchange filing.

The Reserve Bank of India had issued a framework for payment aggregators in India in March 2022. Under this framework, payment aggregators are mandated to obtain a licence for acquiring merchants and provide them with digital payments acceptance solutions.

This was done primarily to ensure the safety of merchants and consumers. Payment aggregator also provides an easy and affordable way of accepting payments to help small business adapt to digital ways in a streamlined manner.

"It's a vital development as it energises our vision and mission to build India's biggest digital payment infrastructure company. Our flagship payments brand CCAvenue is already one of the top payment gateway brand in India, delivering superior digital products & services to majority of the financial institutions, SMEs, MSMEs and merchants. With regulators entrusting faith in us, we promise to ourselves to make all Indian kiranas and merchants digital, credible and bankable," says Vishal Mehta, managing director, Infibeam Avenues.

Infibeam claims it has the highest portfolio of payment options for merchants with over 200 multi-currency payment options in India alone with run rate of ₹4 lakh crore annually across the platform.

Given its wide network across industry verticals and quantum of transaction processing volume, Infibeam says its flagship brand CCAvenue is well placed to leverage the new role as a payment aggregator and help bring a greater number of micro-entrepreneurs under the fold of e-commerce.

"We will ensure more secure digital payment innovations are delivered to serve and help to grow millions of Indian merchants and simultaneously make India a digital nation," says Vishwas Patel, executive director, Infibeam Avenues.

The payments infrastructure company recently launched CCAvenue mobile app which can be downloaded on any Android phone to convert any Android phone into a payment acceptance terminal without the need for a point-of-sale machine.

Merchants can accept payments in multiple ways like QR code, link-based payments, as well as tap-to-pay, the company says, adding that this will help reach out to more number of offline merchants in India's hinterland.

Infibeam Avenues provides marketplace software technology to large enterprises and institutions including Government eMarketplace (GeM) as well as JioMart.