PayGlocal Has IFSCA Approval For A GIFT City Payments Subsidiary

In this storyPayGlocal

PayGlocal has received in-principle approval from the International Financial Services Centres Authority to establish a wholly owned subsidiary as a Payment Service Provider in GIFT-IFSC.

The approval covers account issuance, including e-money accounts, cross-border money transfers and merchant acquisition. The company said the regulated presence gives it a base from which to build payment capabilities for businesses operating across international markets. In-principle approval is a preliminary stage, and the entity must satisfy further conditions before receiving final authorisation.

It follows two other regulatory permissions. Last year PayGlocal received final authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a Payment Aggregator-Cross Border, covering both inward and outward transactions. It has also begun expanding into the United States after registering as a Money Services Business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Founded in 2021 by Prachi Dharani, Rohit Sukhija and Yogesh Lokhande, PayGlocal enables Indian and global businesses to accept payments across markets. It supports more than 130 currencies and over 40 global and local payment methods, serving merchants in exports, retail, travel, education and SaaS. Its products include multi-currency accounts, payment gateways, alternate payment methods, and tools for overseas merchants accepting payments from Indian customers through UPI, cards and netbanking. It is backed by Tiger Global, Peak XV and BEENEXT.

PayGlocal joins a growing list of firms taking the same route. IFSCA granted in-principle PSP approvals to Betafront Tech, Zinc Money and GlomoPay in 2024, to Infibeam Avenues' IA Fintech in October 2025, and to EbixCash subsidiary Buyforex in January 2026.

Three regulators in three jurisdictions is the point of this, not the GIFT City address.

Cross-border payments is a business where what you may legally do is decided separately in every country you touch. PayGlocal holds RBI authorisation to move money in and out of India as a cross-border payment aggregator. It has registered with FinCEN in the United States as a Money Services Business. A GIFT-IFSC subsidiary adds a third permission set, governed by IFSCA rather than by the RBI, under rules written for international rather than domestic business.

Each licence unlocks a different set of things the company can offer. The GIFT City approval specifically permits issuing e-money accounts, which a domestic Indian payment aggregator cannot do. That is the substantive gain here: the ability to hold balances for merchants rather than only to pass payments through.

For an exporter or a SaaS company billing customers in several currencies, that difference matters. Passing a payment through means the money arrives converted, on someone else's timing, at someone else's rate. Holding a balance means choosing when to convert.

Building that capability inside an Indian-regulated structure, rather than through an offshore entity, is what GIFT-IFSC exists to make possible. Whether the economics work is a separate question, and one the company will answer only once it is operating.

The pattern in the approvals list is worth reading.

Betafront Tech, Zinc Money and GlomoPay in 2024. Infibeam's IA Fintech in October 2025. EbixCash's Buyforex in January 2026. PayGlocal now. GIFT City is steadily accumulating exactly the kind of company that would otherwise have incorporated in Singapore or Dubai to run its cross-border business.

That is what the centre was built to do, and it is working more quietly than the headline announcements about global banks setting up desks there. Payments is an unglamorous category, but it is the one where jurisdiction genuinely determines what a company can offer. A fintech that wants to hold client balances in multiple currencies and move them across borders has to be regulated somewhere that permits it.

For Indian exporters the practical consequence is who they bank with. An exporter selling into a dozen markets currently holds accounts across several providers, often offshore, because no single Indian-regulated entity could offer the full set. A GIFT City PSP can, in principle, consolidate that.

The caution is that in-principle approval is not a licence. Final authorisation requires meeting IFSCA's conditions, and the company has not published a launch timeline, named banking partners or specified which corridors it will open first. Those are the details that will determine whether this becomes an operating business or an entry on a regulatory roster.

Nor does PayGlocal have this to itself. Several firms already hold the same approval, and cross-border payments is a margin business where the winner is usually whoever has the widest set of local rails and the lowest cost of moving money, rather than whoever registered first.

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