Prosus-backed PayU India turns Ebitda positive in September quarter

Payment services provider PayU India turned profitable in the September quarter, with adjusted Ebitda turning positive at $3 million from a loss of $6 million a year ago largely due to a growth in its merchant-lending business.

The Prosus-backed company's Ebitda margin rose 400 basis points to 1% in the quarter. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

PayU's revenue in the September quarter rose to $214 million, up 21% year‑on‑year, and 17% sequentially.

The financial data was reported in Dutch investor Prosus’ half-yearly (H1FY26) update on Monday.

Prosus’s latest India disclosures attribute much of this to PayU’s merchant lending arm, whose assets under management increased from $25 million in April 2024 to $204 million by September 2025, as it extends working-capital loans to Swiggy and Meesho merchants.

The Dutch investor describes PayU as the payment gateway “connector” across its India portfolio, which also includes Swiggy, Meesho, PharmEasy, Rapido and ixigo, with tighter links between these businesses meant to deepen usage and support growth.

Growth momentum

For the half year ended September 2025, PayU India’s consolidated revenue rose 20% year‑on‑year to $397 million, cementing India as one of the main growth pillars in Prosus’s e-commerce portfolio.

Within this, the payments business brought in $301 million, also up 20%, while the credit business added $96 million, a 17% increase over the year‑ago period.

At the India ecosystem level, Prosus reported revenue of $397 million in H1FY26, up from $332 million in the same period a year earlier, representing a 20% growth for the segment.

In payments, PayU India delivered adjusted Ebitda of $2 million in H1FY26, compared with a loss in the year‑ago period, while the credit arm narrowed its adjusted Ebitda margin from –20% to –3% and reached breakeven in the September quarter.

Prosus said this improvement was driven by a sharper tilt towards higher‑margin, value‑added services and software‑as‑a‑service products, such as fraud‑risk tools and multi‑factor authentication.

“These higher‑margin services are gaining traction, with VAS and SaaS revenue contributing 34% of payments revenue, adding to strong growth in the mid‑market and SMB segments,” the Dutch investor said in its statement.

The investor also reported that payment volumes at PayU India jumped 55% in the first half of FY26, led by a surge in smaller-ticket UPI payments, even as take rates held steady, thanks to portfolio tweaking towards higher-yield segments.

Beyond PayU, Prosus has added minority stakes in Rapido and ixigo during 2025, and notes recent IPOs of Bluestone and Urban Company as evidence that parts of its India portfolio are maturing.

Prosus began backing India’s consumer internet sector in 2005 through its parent Naspers, with one of its early bets being a stake in travel portal Goibibo in 2007, before widening its portfolio across ecommerce, payments, food delivery and health‑tech.

Over the past two decades, it has steadily ramped up its exposure to the market, committing more than $10 billion across payments via PayU, food delivery through Swiggy, social commerce platform Meesho, health‑tech firm PharmEasy, bike‑taxi app Rapido and travel portal ixigo.

On the payment gateway front, PayU India operates in a crowded payments gateway market that includes Cashfree Payments, Razorpay, BillDesk and Paytm, among others.