Razorpay’s new RBI Payment Aggregator – Cross Border (PA–CB) licence sits on top of a much broader push: going deeper into cross‑border flows, expanding across Southeast Asia, and rolling out an AI‑heavy, full‑stack suite for both Indian and global businesses.
What the PA–CB licence actually unlocks
The RBI’s PA–CB framework lets non‑bank players legally aggregate cross‑border online payments for import and export of permitted goods and services, subject to strict net‑worth, KYC and FEMA compliance norms. Razorpay is now authorised as a PA–CB, which means it can:
- Handle both inward and outward international payments for Indian businesses (export and import PA–CB).
- Onboard overseas merchants using enhanced due diligence, including video‑KYC of authorised signatories and full FIU‑IND reporting, instead of depending on banks or third‑party platforms.
- Give foreign SaaS and marketplaces a compliant way to collect UPI, RuPay and local card payments from Indian customers without setting up an India entity, with all LRS, TCS and FEMA checks baked into the flow.
For Indian startups, this effectively replaces a patchwork of global PSPs and bank wires with a single domestic stack that supports 130+ currencies, multiple local methods abroad, better success rates and faster settlements—exactly what your prompt outlined.
Recent product expansions and upgrades
Over the last few months, Razorpay has been quietly building a much wider rails‑plus‑software play around this licence.
1. RazorpayX Corporate Cards and credit stack
In June 2025, RazorpayX launched Corporate Cards in partnership with Mastercard, RBL Bank and YES Bank, aimed at startups and digital‑first businesses that struggle to get unsecured credit. Key features include:
- Credit limits up to ₹2 crore with no collateral, using Razorpay’s platform data for underwriting.
- Deep integration into the RazorpayX dashboard for real‑time expense tracking, automated reconciliation and smart controls (spend limits, supplementary cards).
- Lower forex mark‑ups (~2.5%) and curated deals on 500+ SaaS and marketing tools, with a “Savings Negotiator” concierge promising up to 30% savings on key software spends.
This card layer dovetails with PA–CB: the same customers using Razorpay for cross‑border collections can now also finance SaaS, cloud and ad‑spends on the payables side more efficiently.
2. AI‑powered payments, ACS and security
At Global Fintech Fest 2025 and FTX’25, Razorpay showcased a stack of agentic AI‑powered capabilities:
- AI‑driven reconciliation and risk scoring across its payment gateway and RazorpayX, to cut failed payments and fraud.
- Razorpay ACS, launched with YES Bank in November 2025, which is India’s first RBI‑compliant biometric‑ready Access Control Server for card authentication under the new 3‑D Secure norms. This allows issuing banks to offer fingerprint/face‑ID based authentication for ecommerce transactions while staying within RBI’s latest guidelines.
For cross‑border flows, these AI and security layers translate into higher approval rates, fewer chargebacks and more compliant transaction monitoring—all key differentiators when competing with global PSPs.
3. Apple Pay and global wallets for Indian merchants
In September 2025, Razorpay announced that it had become the first Indian payment gateway to enable Apple Pay for Indian businesses, allowing merchants to accept Apple Wallet payments from customers worldwide. This sits alongside existing support for cards, UPI, wallets and net‑banking, and is particularly useful for high‑ARPU SaaS and D2C brands targeting customers in the US, Europe and East Asia.
International expansion: from Malaysia to Singapore and beyond
- Malaysia (Curlec by Razorpay): After acquiring recurring‑payments firm Curlec, Razorpay claims to have captured around 3% market share in Malaysia’s online payments, proving its ability to localise and compete with incumbents.
- Singapore (2025): In March 2025, Razorpay expanded to Singapore—its second Southeast Asian market. The Singapore platform offers:
Management has said they are actively evaluating Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam as next destinations, with an ambition that international operations will, over a 10‑year horizon, become as large as India, which currently processes about $180 billion in annual payment volume on Razorpay rails.
Read this: Razorpay to Allow Indian Travellers in Malaysia to Pay Directly Through UPI
Strategic significance for startups and global firms
Taken together—the PA–CB licence, RazorpayX credit stack, AI‑driven risk and international gateways—Razorpay is positioning itself less as a “payment gateway” and more as an operating system for money movement and working capital for Indian and regional businesses.
For Indian startups, this means:
- One stack to collect from 130+ countries and pay vendors globally, with FX, LRS, TCS and FEMA compliance embedded.
- Access to credit, cards and AI‑automation on the same platform to manage SaaS, marketing and payroll spends.
- A domestic partner that is simultaneously plugged into Apple Pay, real‑time schemes like PayNow, and future biometric authentication standards, reducing their dependency on scattered global PSPs.
For global SaaS and marketplaces, Razorpay’s PA–CB licence and international presence mean they can launch in India—or expand across Southeast Asia—without building local payment stacks from scratch, while staying on the right side of RBI and FEMA.
