Stock broker Groww quietly surrenders payment aggregator licence
08 Apr 2026, 02:31 PMThe development comes less than two years after securing a coveted payments licence, and barely two months after the company going public.
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Stock-broking platform Groww has quietly surrendered the certificate of authorisation it obtained from the Reserve Bank to operate as an online payment aggregator.
Groww Pay Services Private Limited, a subsidiary of Groww, has had its PA licence cancelled by the RBI in January 2026, according to the central bank's website.
The development comes less than two years after securing a coveted payments licence, and barely two months after the company going public.
The Bengaluru-based company went public in November 2025, riding strong retail investor interest in its broking-led growth story. However, there has been no public disclosure from the company on the development so far.
Groww's draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), its updated filing in September 2025, and the final red herring prospectus (RHP) filed in October 2025 also show no mention of any intent to surrender or discontinue the PA business.
The company's exchange filings since listing also do not reflect any such intimation.
The UPI payments platform Groww Pay at one point allowed bill payment services such as making loan and credit card repayments, bill payments and mobile recharge services, among others. Bill payments and mobile recharge services were discontinued last year in May.
Groww's payments aggregation business may not have even started – or scaled meaningfully enough to impact its financials, which remain heavily dependent on its broking business.
The PA licence would have allowed Groww to onboard online merchants and facilitate digital payments. The payments team at the company was fairly small. "Payment aggregator business did not make sense for Groww. It works with other payment aggregators," a payments industry official said.
Groww is not the first listed company to exit the PA business. Zomato, in 2024, surrendered its PA licence five months after receiving the final approval from the RBI. The food-tech firm made a regulatory filing informing that its Board made this decision, citing "lack of competitive edge."
Zomato's decision to apply for the PA license was more to align with the RBI guidelines then, according to which, any ecommerce player aggregating merchants and settling funds with multiple merchants without an intermediary PA or acquiring bank in between would require the PA license.
The Head and Tale has sent a query to Groww seeking their comment.
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