
Payment solutions provider Oxigen is in the ‘advanced stages’ of talks with investors for a $200m expansion drive across semi-urban and rural India, the company has said.
According to Oxigen’s chairman and managing director Pramod Saxena the firm is looking to raise funds in the range of $150m to $200m, the majority of which is expected to be in-hand by June of this year.
Saxena said that the new investment would fund a hiring drive of up to 1,500 people and the launch of a payments bank. Oxigen is also looking to ramp up its payment network across semi-urban and rural India.
He explained: “We are gearing up to expand our support system and the infrastructure for services aggregation, distribution as well as payment processing and collections in semi-urban and rural areas, particularly in east and Central India.”
Oxigen has already approached the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a payments bank license with plans to promote financial inclusion by offering small savings accounts and remittance services to migrant workers, low income households and small businesses.
Saxena said: “For our payments bank we are ramping up our operations and workforce. We will be hiring around 1,000 people for this.”
The firm is also eyeing the remittance market. According to Saxena the firm is “very optimistic” about its future in the remittance market, a $73bn opportunity with a growth rate of 7% annually.
Whitepapers
Related reading
Central banks best suited to issue digital currencies
By Aaran Fronda A recent report by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) said that central banks rather than private ... read more
Instant payments: innovations inbound for corporates
In 2020, instant payments look set to continue their current trajectory to become the biggest trend in payments. While these schemes already offer numerous benefits to corporates, leveraging innovations such as APIs and request to pay will go some way to unlocking their full potential, argues Michael Knetsch
Obstacles exist for banks to meet ECB’s instant payments goal
The cost of joining instant payment platforms will be one of many hurdles banks and payment services providers must overcome to meet ... read more
Banks must be aware of “biases” in data used to train ML models
Financial institutions need to be conscious of biases in the historical data that is being used to train machine learning (ML) models, ... read more