Cashfree Payments Appoints Former NPCI MD & CEO Abhaya Hota as Independent Director

Cashfree Payments, a payment and API banking company, announced the appointment of former NPCI MD and CEO Abhaya Hota as an independent director of the company. 

Hota is a veteran in the Indian banking and payments industry and has spent close to three decades at the Reserve Bank of India. He was the former managing director and CEO of the National Payments Corporation of India, where he played a critical role in the design, development, and implementation of payment systems and policies in India. He was also instrumental in the implementation of MICR technology in cheque clearing, the launch of UPI, and RuPay credit cards, which are India’s own card scheme. 

Read: Cashfree Payments Launches New Payment Solutions: ‘Embedded Payments’

Hota also serves as an independent director at the Federal Bank, NSE Clearing, Protean e-Gov Technologies, and RBI Innovation Hub. 

Hota said, “I am happy to join Cashfree Payments India Pvt. Ltd.'s board as an independent director and look forward to supporting them as they grow and scale India’s digital payments ecosystem.” 

Cashfree Payments is an RBI-licensed payment aggregator and a payment service provider in India, processing transactions worth $80+ billion annually. It is a trusted choice for over 6,00,000 businesses for digital payment solutions. 

Since receiving the PA license in December 2023, the company has onboarded thousands of large, medium, and small-scale merchants, helping them seamlessly transact and grow. After it received the PA license, the company’s transaction volume increased by nearly 30 percent. Highlighting the company’s growth, Akash Sinha, CEO and co-founder of the company, said to BusinessLine, “From December to March, the merchant leads have grown almost twice. Currently, we are close to 35,000–36,000 leads per month, and we expect it to grow to 50,000 leads by June.” 

Over the last few months, the company has introduced industry-first products like FlowWise, KYC Link, Risk Shield, and more. Outside of India, Cashfree Payments is expanding its presence in the UAE region through its acquired partner, Telr.