Latest news with #ZarinDaruwala
Time of India
12-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
RBI keeping a close watch on newly-licensed payment firms
The Reserve Bank of India has tightened its scrutiny of newly licensed payment aggregators with regular audits and close inspection of the procedures they follow, according to industry executives. After the regulator brought digital payments within its ambit, it is also trying to ensure that payment firms do not have any loose ends through which fraudsters can get access to the wider banking ecosystem. 'One of the things the RBI wants to know is if these merchants are genuine, if they are actual online businesses,' said a chief executive officer of a payments firm, requesting not to be named. 'The idea is to keep the ecosystem free from fraudulent merchants.' KYC (know your customer) is one important aspect that the RBI is looking at very closely, the people cited earlier said. There is a draft proposal that the regulator had circulated regarding making full KYC mandatory for every merchant being onboarded by payment aggregators. The circular is yet to be implemented. ETtech Live Events The executive cited earlier further said RBI officials are also calling up field staff to check if KYC procedures laid out by the company are being followed by agents on the ground. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Payout is an important area of concern for the payments industry, people said. Payouts are processed when any business instead of accepting payments wants to pay either its vendors, cashbacks to customers or process ecommerce returns. 'The question the industry is pondering over is how should these payouts be processed, if they need to be moved via the settlement accounts only,' the executive cited earlier said. The regulator has given out licences to some 54 companies which are allowed to operate as online payment processing entities. Now it wants to ensure that these companies are strictly abiding by norms with regards to supporting payments for online merchants. 'We have always been scrutinised by banks, but bank audits were mostly procedural, something which we were used to, but now RBI audits have become much more stringent and they want to ensure that the rules are being followed across the organisation,' a senior executive at a payments firm said. The RBI is also pushing these fintechs, which in most cases are venture-funded startups, to have strict board-approved policies followed by the management teams. 'We have added professional independent directors to the board now and have changed many approval systems in a way that it abides by regulatory protocol. There is more hygiene that the RBI is trying to bring in,' said another chief executive officer at a Mumbai-based digital payments major. PhonePe recently appointed accomplished banker Zarin Daruwala to its board as an independent director. Earlier this year, PayU had appointed Renu Sud Karnad, former managing director at HDFC, as the chairperson. While on a monthly basis, there is data sharing with the regulator, officials also turn up at their offices on short notice, industry insiders said. 'We had an instance where officials informed us on Friday evening that they will be coming on Monday,' said the executive cited above. Overall, the message that the RBI wants to give to this emerging sector is that they need to put systems in place and stick to them. A founder at a payments firm also pointed out that the RBI is not expecting these firms who are new to the regulatory regime to already have everything in place. But it wants founders to be honest about the progress and remain transparent about it. As the Indian digital payments ecosystem grows, the RBI is also trying to ensure that these firms closely follow the best practices of the financial services industry. Previously, players such as Razorpay and Cashfree had faced regulatory ire when their customer onboarding was completely brought to a stop. Paytm needed to get government clearance regarding their international investments. PayU needed to get its Indian corporate entity to keep the RBI satisfied. The Naspers-backed company managed to get the final PA licence only in May 2025.
Time of India
06-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
IPO-bound PhonePe announces UPI payments on feature phones
Live Events Fintech firm PhonePe announced rollout of UPI-based payments for feature phones with the purchase of GSPay technology stack from conversational engagement platform is a mobile application built on top of UPI 123PAY , the UPI payment solution for feature phones by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). PhonePe said it will customise and extend the recently acquired GSPay IP and launch its own feature-phone based UPI payment mobile app on new feature phones in India, over the next few will offer basic UPI features, such as P2P transfers, offline QR payments, and receiving money from other UPI customers to users' mobile numbers or self-QRs, to create full payment interoperability between feature phones and smartphones.'This (feature phones) segment of users has been historically underserved by the digital financial industry and the broader startup ecosystem. We hope we can enable crores of these feature phone customers to participate in India's burgeoning digital payments market," said Sameer Nigam, cofounder and chief executive of to industry data, India had approximately 24 crore feature phone users in 2024, and 15 crore more feature phone shipments are expected over the next five company has recently added Zarin Daruwala to it board of directors, where she joins CEO Nigam, Walmart chief financial officer John David Rainey, former revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj and retired as the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank-India on March 31 after a nine-year-long stint. Before that, she managed the wholesale banking business of ICICI Bank as president of the vertical. In this capacity, she also served on the boards of key ICICI group companies, ICICI Lombard General Insurance, and ICICI Securities. In the past, she has been on the board of JSW has started the process to list on the Indian exchanges by converting into a public company from a private entity in April 2025.
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Business Standard
05-06-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Fintech major PhonePe appoints new board member as it prepares for IPO
Fintech major PhonePe has appointed former Standard Chartered Bank India chief executive officer Zarin Daruwala to its board as the company prepares for its IPO. The PhonePe board includes senior Walmart executives John David Rainey, Donna Morris, Leigh Hopkins; TeamLease vice-chairman Manish Sabharwal; IAS officer Tarun Bajaj; PhonePe chairman Rohit Bhagat; and co-founders Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari. PhonePe is the largest player on India's real-time payments system Unified Payments Interface (UPI). It reversed its listing from Singapore to India in 2022.
