BackBack Cashfree targeting return to profitability by Q1FY25: CEO

Nearly a year after barring Cashfree Payments and Razorpay from onboarding new merchants on their payment aggregator (PA) platforms, the Reserve Bank of India last month lifted the ban and granted them final PA licence.

Ever since, there has been a “significant pent-up demand among businesses eager to utilize Cashfree Payments services," Akash Sinha, CEO and co-founder of the Bengaluru-based payments company told Mint. “Since obtaining the PA licence, we have already onboarded over 25,000 accounts (or merchants) that were pending for the past 12 months. With expectations of 45,000 to 50,000 monthly merchant leads going forward, we are confident of a sustained growth of our platform," he added.

When there were no new business/merchants coming onto its payments platform due to the regulatory ban, the once-profitable Cashfree—which claims to have about 3-4 lakh merchant base—said it invested more time developing new products and building new lines of businesses. “We just went harder on cross-sell and upsell, activated a lot of dormant accounts, increased the wallet share with existing accounts. And we have seen the growth in payments volume and on overall revenue-wise from the existing merchant base. We will be higher than what we did last year," Sinha said.