airpay Payment Services receives RBI approval to operate as cross-border payment aggregator

airpay Payment Services has secured approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a cross-border payment aggregator, completing its set of licences under the unified payment aggregator framework.

With this, the Mumbai-based company is authorised across online (PA-O), physical or POS and QR (PA-P), and cross-border (PA-CB) categories.

The approval places airpay among a small group of regulated entities that can process domestic and international payments on a single compliant stack. The list includes players such as Razorpay, Easebuzz, PayU and Pine Labs.

The company said the expanded authorisation will allow it to offer collections, payouts and settlements for enterprises, D2C brands and SMEs through both online and offline merchant channels.

airpay expects the cross-border capability to increase its processing volumes by 30 to 40 percent over the next six to twelve months. It also projects that cross-border flows could contribute more than 20% of revenue in this period. It plans to onboard more than 50,000 merchants as Indian exporters, SaaS firms, subscription businesses and D2C brands expand in overseas markets.

"Indian business growth is no longer domestic-only. Our exporters, SaaS firms, digital merchants and local retailers are all engaging globally, and they need reliability, compliance and speed in payments," said Kunal Jhunjhunwala, Founder of airpay Payment Services.

"RBI's approval positions us to support that shift responsibly and at scale. It strengthens our ability to provide Indian businesses a regulated yet seamless bridge to make or collect payments from Mumbai, Manipur or to Madrid, he added.

RBI’s PA-CB framework brings cross-border payment facilitation under direct regulatory oversight with rules covering governance, escrow management and foreign exchange compliance. The company said this structure is expected to reduce settlement risks and simplify compliance for merchants handling international transactions.

Founded in 2012, airpay operates in UPI acquiring, QR, payment links, PoS and merchant lifecycle management.