Indian payment companies shore up talent in foreign shores to boost revenues

Indian merchant payment companies are scouting for business opportunities outside the country as margins turn wafer-thin amid rising domestic competition.

Pine Labs, Juspay, CC Avenue and FSS have set up operations outside India and are also hiring senior talent for these markets, which they hope will be their new growth drivers. Aiding the push is the growing acceptance of Indian payments technology worldwide.

In India, these merchant payment companies have been losing out on major revenue generation opportunities due to competition from popular payment modes like Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay debit cards which do not attract a fee. The government has also reduced the budgetary allocation for payment subsidies.


Adding to their woes are well-funded startups like Razorpay, Cashfree, Paytm and PhonePe that are vying for market share and competing with global firms like Amazon Pay and Google Pay.

The executives ET spoke with said the aim is to help build partnerships with large brands, banks and network providers which can increase acceptability of the company in those areas.

Pine Labs has hired Dounia Jouron, who was previously at the Netherlands-headquartered payments firm Adyen. Jouron will be in charge of driving Pine Labs’ partnership businesses in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the UK. Last year, Pine Labs had hired Marc Gendron for the firm's US business. Gendron was earlier with American payment firm Netspend and Samsung Electronics.

“Our products and solutions have been tech led and are extremely transportable across geography,” said Amrish Rau, chief executive officer, Pine Labs. “The fintech trends are similar around most businesses wanting to receive, hold and move money. We now have clients in 35 countries...”

Pine Labs has hired senior executives across multiple roles in Dubai, USA and Australia. It works with large retailers in most of these geographies and also processes payments for 17 airlines.

Softbank-backed Juspay recently hired former Citibanker executive James Lloyd as senior director for its international business. Lloyd took to social media platform Linkedin to announce his appointment and that the company is launching operations in Dublin, Ireland.

Juspay cofounder Sheetal Lalwani did not respond to ET's query.

Some of the older generation of payment companies like CCAvenue and FSS have built their presence in the Middle East and South Africa, working with several leading banks and regulatory bodies.

“We anticipate that these regions will be key growth drivers for FSS in the years to come. Two experienced leaders have joined us in recent months to help FSS grow bigger and stronger in these regions,” said V Balasubramanian, chief executive officer of FSS.

In June, Vishal Maru joined the firm as head of its global processing, while Amiya Behera joined in May to head its global sales.

CCAvenue, which operates in the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia, has set up a 30-member team dedicated to the business operations there. According to its June quarter investor presentation the company has hit an annualised payments run rate of AED 16 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2025. About 80% of the payments are processed through credit cards in the international markets.

“After the Russia-Ukraine war, many countries have started building their own domestic payment networks, which means more integrations for players like us,” said Vishwas Patel, joint managing director of Infibeam Avenues, which runs the payment platform CAAvenue. “Also some geographies are mandating data localisation which is also a challenge, but there are major opportunities in these countries.”

ET had reported on August 6 that digital payments major PhonePe is planning to set up payment operations outside India and is considering markets like the Middle East and South-East Asia.