India, May 23 -- The past two years have seen a rush for payments licences in India. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has handed out payment aggregator (PA) and payment gateway (PG) authorisations in rapid succession to a host of companies.

From PhonePe to BharatPe and from Cashfree to Razorpay, more than 55 companies (fintech and otherwise) now have PA licences. MobiKwik, Paytm, Zoho, Juspay, Decentro, CRED, PayU, Enkash, Pine Labs, Amazon Pay, Innoviti, Razorpay, CC Avenue, Tata Pay, Google Pay, Infibeam Avenues, and Mswipe are among the other contenders in the PA space.

But Akash Sinha, CEO and founder of Cashfree Payments, argues that obtaining a licence is merely the floor and not a competitive moat. This is why even after the rush ...