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ETtech In-depth: Regulatory changes may raise payment firms’ operating costs, shrink revenue streams
Shrinking revenue streams, a bruising price war, and an accelerating push for consolidation are the three big outcomes payment industry executives foresee from the double whammy of recent RBI restrictions on merchant payments and the ban on real-money gaming.
Yet, the regulations have also created fresh opportunities, bringing formalisation to the sector and opening new business lines, insiders said.
In August, the union government banned real-money gaming, thereby wiping out Rs 20,000-30,000 crore worth of transactions for the e-payment firms. ET reported on September 18 that firms could see around 20% of their revenue lines vanishing because of this directive.
Earlier this month, the central bank made full-KYC mandatory for payment aggregator (PA) firms and stopped all non-marketplace merchant payments. This directive ended a lucrative business opportunity around rental payments for PAs, as ET reported earlier.
“The twin directives could push up operational cost and wipe out potentially 40-60% of the revenue generating opportunities for payment firms,” a senior industry executive said on the condition of anonymity. The impact on individual firms would depend on the amount of exposure they have towards gaming and rental payments, the person added.
The second-order effect of such a move could be consolidation in the industry, coupled with push back in public listing plans of some players and increasing competition for ecommerce, direct-to-consumer, and fintech brands, industry insiders said.
“Easy revenue channels have been cut down by the regulator and the government… Now the remaining revenue streams will get further commoditised,” founder of one of the large payment aggregators said on the condition of anonymity.
Also Read: ETtech Explainer: RBI's digital payment authentication rules & their impact
Major disruption
The ban on real-money gaming startups will take away volumes and high commissions and the ban on rental payments through PAs will eat into a major revenue item for these players.
“This was easy business, rental payments commissions were high,” said the chief executive of an online payment aggregator. “For gaming companies, commissions were higher than average and volumes were huge. Now, with both of them gone, payment firms have to struggle to make up for the loss.”
This could give rise to a wave of consolidation in the industry.
More deals like Razorpay's acquisition of Ezetap to expand from online to offline payments, and PayU's acquisition of Mindgate for expansion into UPI payment processing, are likely, industry experts said.
Increasing aggression
Large payment firms with deep pockets have always taken advantage of their scale to keep the pricing low, thereby making it more difficult for smaller PAs to make money from conventional settlement businesses.
Now, with the disappearance of these easier business lines, the stress on the smaller players will be even more, one of the executives quoted above said.
“There are companies who are ready to burn to acquire customers, (while) some players like us are chasing profitability,” said Parimal Kumar Shivendu, group head of Easebuzz. “We are pitching to our clients stronger (SaaS) software services offerings in a bid to retain them,” he said.
The impact will be higher on smaller PAs who relied on gaming and rent payments for 60% or more of their business.
Players like Razorpay, PayU and others will double down to expand their market share as smaller players face such challenges, experts said.
Responsibility going up
A former RBI official who has tracked the fintech sector closely told ET the central bank has tightened the norms with a clear mindset of expecting higher degree of responsibility from payment companies.
With regulations comes responsibility and the RBI has conveyed to these startups to behave as regulated entities, by focusing on compliance, building strong KYC checks, and staying away from risky business, the person said.
Through the new master direction, the RBI has mandated full KYC for all these startups, a point of contention for the longest time between payment firms and the central bank.
“KYC was always thought to be the responsibility of banks, but now the RBI has put the onus on PAs as much as banks, showing their importance in the ecosystem,” one of the executives quoted above said.
New opportunities
The new directives, while increasing the burden of compliance, also makes it smoother for fintech firms to expand their scope of operations as PAs.
New rules allow existing licence holders to start a new line of business across PA-online, PA-offline or PA-cross border just through a prior intimation to the RBI.
“The new rules have introduced greater uniformity across payment aggregators and cross-border payment aggregators,” said Prachi Dharani, chief executive officer of Payglocal, a cross-border focused payments startup. “With standardised regulations, all PAs now operate under a common framework, bringing the industry onto a unified platform in terms of compliance and operations.”
While some of the large offline payment companies like Pine Labs, Innoviti, and Mswipe already have a PA licence, this could encourage many of the online players to take a stab at the cross-border market and the offline payments space.
“Competition will go up manifold, and with the market expanding, there is a huge opportunity for the current fintechs to build their niche and also have omnichannel solutions,” said one of the founders quoted above.
Source: EconomicTimes
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