Nium Looks to Expand in India With Payment Licenses

Nium has received new payments licenses in India as it looks to expand in that country.

The Singapore-based real-time payments FinTech announced Monday (Feb. 5) that it had gotten principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a prepaid payment instrument (PPI) license and a payment aggregator (PA) license.

“The two licenses will allow the global payments company to offer and improve upon a variety of financial products in the country, from prepaid cards to merchant payment acquiring,” the company said in a news release. “Nium continues to expand its license portfolio to serve the needs of a rapidly evolving global payments landscape.”

The PPI license will let Nium issue prefunded, pre-loaded cards for consumer and business applications inside India.

The PA license, meanwhile, allows the company to offer merchant onboarding and acquiring services in the Indian market, including “provisioning an online space for merchants, streamlining fund flow processes and integrating cutting-edge technology into websites for smoother checkout experiences,” the release said.

The license also lets Nium connect to real-time payment services such as India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

“These licenses make Nium a one-stop-shop for all payment needs in India,” said Anupam Pahuja, the company’s general manager for the Asia Pacific region, Middle East and Africa. “For the end customer, Nium is making it seamless for Indians to shop the world.”

Nium’s expansion into India is happening as the country’s homegrown payment system is stretching beyond the nation’s borders.

As PYMNTS wrote last month, Google Pay has signed an agreement with the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) aimed at broadening the use of UPI for travelers outside of India.

The two entities will also collaborate to establish similar digital payment systems in other parts of the world, and to use the UPI infrastructure to simplify remittances between countries.

“UPI has demonstrated to the world the step change that happens in economies with the introduction of interoperable, population scale digital infrastructure, and each economy that joins such networks will create impact beyond the sum of parts,” Deeksha Kaushal, director of partnerships for Google Pay, said in a news release.

Meanwhile, Nium said last year that it is aiming to become a public company sometime in 2025, with plans to acquire other payment startups in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.