IPO-bound Razorpay to enter four new South-East Asian markets after Malaysia, Singapore

The move comes as the SaaS-based fintech firm gears up for a public listing in the Indian stock markets within the next 12-18 months.

The company, which first entered South-East Asia through Malaysia in 2022, resumed its regional expansion by launching operations in Singapore earlier this year.

“We are in Singapore and Malaysia right now, and looking at launching in three or four more geographies next year," said Harshil Mathur, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Razorpay. “Broadly, we’re looking at Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are all on the cards. But we’ll wait for the licenses in each market before launching."

Mathur added that Razorpay has already applied for licenses in one or two of the upcoming markets, but the process remains in its early stages.

In terms of investments, he noted that the major costs associated with entering each new market are related to obtaining regulatory licenses and establishing local teams. “There’s also some R&D (research and development) spending to structure operations for each market. But since we are B2B (business-to-business), we don’t have significant marketing costs, and most of our engineering operations run from India, so the main challenge is licensing," he explained.

Razorpay expects the digital payments ecosystem in South-East Asia to witness significant growth, with transaction volumes projected to surpass $2 trillion by 2030, as reported by Mint earlier.

AI and payments

Within its online payments business, Razorpay has partnered with the National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) and OpenAI to pilot agentic payments on ChatGPT, exploring AI-driven commerce at a national scale. “For this, we’ve partnered with BigBasket and Vodafone as merchant partners," Mathur said.

On the cross-border side, Razorpay recently launched its import stack, enabling global merchants to accept payments from India. “We launched it with Airbnb," Mathur said. “When an Indian resident books an Airbnb anywhere in the world, the payment goes through us. We’re their exclusive partners for all global payments from India."

This is Razorpay’s play on outward remittances within its cross-border offerings. He added that the company is working with several other international brands to enable similar cross-border payment flows.

For Razorpay, revenue from international markets is currently the fastest-growing segment. “All areas are growing, but of course, payments remain our largest business. It’s growing at around 40% year-on-year, though the base is large.," Mathur said. “The other parts of our business—offline payments, cross-border, RazorpayX, and international—are growing much faster, at about 70-90% year-on-year, since they are smaller segments. (Fastest growing is) our international operations in South-East Asia, including Malaysia and Singapore, are expanding rapidly."

Offline focus

Meanwhile, within India, Razorpay is strengthening its offline payments business. “The third big area that we are launching is on the airport lounge side," said Mathur. “All airport lounges by GMR, TFS, and Adani—the checkout experience is powered by Razorpay, making up almost 90% of all lounges in India."

Founded in 2014 by Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur, Razorpay is an India-born company with US incorporation.

In May this year, Razorpay completed its flipback to India as part of its plan to go public within the next 12-18 months.

The company has raised over $740 million from investors, including Tiger Global, Peak XV Partners, Y Combinator, Lone Pine Capital, and Alkeon Capital. In FY24, its total income rose to ₹2,501 crore from ₹2,293 crore in the previous year, with nearly 75% of revenue coming from its online payment gateway business. Net profit increased to ₹34 crore from ₹7 crore a year ago. The company is yet to report its FY25 financials.