Even as overall income saw a bump, the Indian entity’s revenue growth rate slowed from the 47% witnessed in FY22.
This comes at a time when new merchant signups have been paused by PayU India as banking regulator Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked the payments entity to reapply for a licence, ET reported exclusively on January 12.
PayU India offers payment solutions to businesses, including gateways, payment links, and web checkout, among other services.
The RBI order affected signups for PayU India starting from the last quarter of FY23.
According to Prosus, the rise in FY23 revenues (for PayU India) came “on account of continued growth in enterprise and small and medium-sized businesses, as well as diversification into newer segments including government merchants, omnichannel and other non-MDR (merchant discount rate) products”.
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The total payment value processed by PayU India also grew 33% year-on-year to $58 billion. However, this has slowed from the 44% growth seen in FY22. Total transaction growth rose 25% to 1.4 billion in FY23.
Currently, India continues to be the largest market for Prosus’ payment service provider (PSP) business, and contributed 51% of the group’s core PSP revenues in FY23, up from 47% in the previous fiscal year. A PSP provides payment services to businesses or consumers.
On a consolidated basis, the core PSP business and credit drove PayU’s revenue growth up 32% to $903 million globally.
Credit business witnesses a bump
As part of its results, Prosus disclosed that revenue for its Indian credit business, LazyPay, grew three times to $83 million, largely through growth in personal loans.
According to Prosus, Lazypay continues to scale quickly, issuing loans worth $742 million in FY23, up 47% from the previous fiscal year.
The total outstanding loan book for the Indian credit arm stood at $256 million as of 31 March 2023, the Dutch multinational added.
However, ET had reported last year that RBI regulations forced LazyPay to relook its operations. This led to the shuttering of LazyCard, its card offering, which was launched in January last year.
“In FY23, in response to changes in regulations, the group stopped its digital bank offering (LazyCard), which contributed the largest part of the credit business’ trading loss. As a result of the closure, the India credit metrics exclude LazyCard. The group continues to look for new opportunities to invest in further product diversification,” said Prosus.