Financial services firm NTT Data Payment Services India plans to expand into commercial consumer-facing businesses, including merchant solutions, direct onboarding, cross-border payments, and, eventually, small-business lending.
The subsidiary of Japanese infrastructure major NTT Data entered the Indian market in 2019 through the acquisition of Atom Technologies and has since largely worked with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and other clients on back-end payments infrastructure.
Over the next three years, the company plans a two-pronged strategy: expand its payments business in India and enter new segments such as merchant financing and cross-border payments. It also plans to broaden its offerings with value-added services such as in-store payments, online transactions and bill payments, which it already provides in Vietnam and Malaysia.
Shinichiro Nishikawa, head of global payments strategy and transformation at NTT Data Japan, said the company will pursue this through organic investments to strengthen its payments and financial infrastructure business, while partnerships and acquisitions will help it enter newer segments such as merchant financing and cross-border payments.
India currently contributes only a small share of the company's global business because the zero merchant discount rate (MDR) on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions has made payment services difficult to monetize.
“In other countries, we can get the MDR from the transaction, but here, we cannot. That's why from the overall gross profit and revenue basis, it does not contribute much right now. But we are also trying more services and trying to expand to other areas,” Nishikawa told Mint.
Inorganic push
On Thursday, the company launched its Adaptis platform for merchant payments in the country. Already available in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, the platform offers cash-flow-based lending and credit lines to merchants, in addition to payment-based solutions.
In India, the interoperable network platform has been built on UPI guardrails and will link UPI with other fast payment systems across the country through a hub-based architecture for cross-border transactions.
“We need to have a loan licence and a non-bank licence for each country. In India, we don't have those, so we're looking for a good partner,” Nishikawa said, adding that lending also requires certain specifications and domain expertise, which means that just getting the licence may not be sufficient, and an acquisition appears to be a better route.
Merchant financing is a key focus area for the company, not just in India but across Asia. The strategy is being driven by the increasing digitisation of payments and credit, particularly among small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Nishikawa said, adding that opportunities are expanding as more countries adopt e-invoicing and other digital solutions.
Take Ueno, director and chief executive of NTT Data Payment Services, said the strategy is not just about building a quality application but also about implementing operational automation for clients. “So we won’t just focus on the sales part, but also on the back-end part, and gradually capture (share) in these kinds of transactions.”
What sets the company apart from some of its peers is that it is not backed by short-term investors such as venture capital or private equity firms and instead makes long-term strategic investments in the markets where it operates, Nishikawa said.
While these investors sometimes seek to gain market share through competitive pricing, the company’s 15-year experience in countries outside Japan has shown that this business model is unsustainable and that quality suffers.
“We have already experienced clients coming back to us. So, it is our philosophy that we are here for a long-term relationship and offer a sustainable business to the client,” he said, adding that the focus is on improving the company’s productivity and product delivery and ensuring operational excellence and being “more polished ourselves”.
As such, Nishikawa is very bullish on the Indian market given the high transaction volumes, high population and advanced digitisation of the payments infrastructure. “That's why we believe we still have room and can get more contribution from the Indian market,” he said, adding that this is the reason the company continues to invest in India and add more resources and people even though the current situation is “very hard”.
The understanding at the group level is that the payments business is a “long-run game”, Nishikawa said, adding that what also gives him comfort is the increasingly good relationship between the two countries and the fact that India is also a very important market for parent NTT Data from the perspective of AI-related investments and technology personnel.
Japanese interest
Japanese financial institutions have stepped up investments in the country's financial services sector over the past year. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC) acquired a 25% stake in Yes Bank, Mizuho Securities picked up a majority stake in Avendus, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc., or MUFG, acquired a 20% stake in Shriram Finance Ltd.
The entry of Japanese majors into Indian financial services provides NTT Data Payments with a natural advantage in extending its domestic relationships with Japanese lenders into other geographies, Nishikawa said, adding that the company is already in discussions with SMBC for business opportunities.
“We collaborate with all the Japanese banks which are there. We being one of the important partners for them from Japan, we get some sort of a preference to work with them,” said chief financial officer Rahul Jain.
This includes partnering with banks to offer white-label payment solutions to their customers, he said, adding that lenders are also more comfortable working with a Japanese payments company. He added that SMBC, which is in the process of integrating with Yes Bank, is expected to begin offering escrow services in about a year.
“It's not easy. Japanese banks expect Japanese quality, not Indian quality. So that's why we are improving the quality to meet Japanese standards, which will be our focus for two years,” Ueno said.
India recorded 142.42 billion digital payment transactions worth ₹1,608 trillion in the six months ended December 2025, according to the Reserve Bank of India's latest Payments System Report. Overall, the country's payment systems processed 142.70 billion transactions worth ₹1,643 trillion during the period, with UPI accounting for 85.5% of transaction volume and 9.5% of transaction value.