Zaakpay is a payment gateway and payment aggregator company based in India, a subsidiary of MobiKwik, that processes online payments for merchants.

This Startup Deep Dive explains what Zaakpay does, how it makes money, who backs it, how it compares with rivals and what could go wrong, using publicly available information. It is educational and not investment advice. Last updated: October 2026.

Zaakpay in Brief

• What it is: Zaakpay is an Indian Payment gateway company.
• Who it serves: consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises.
• Zaakpay is the merchant-facing payment gateway subsidiary of MobiKwik, the Gurugram-based fintech.
• It handles business payments within MobiKwik's payments business, including payments offered through WhatsApp in a partnership with Meta (reported).
• MobiKwik's prospectus says its payments and financial services businesses, including ZIP and ZIP EMI, rely on Zaakpay.
• Funding: Not disclosed in public sources reviewed.

Zaakpay Quick Facts

Figures marked “reported” come from published reports and may differ between sources; “Not disclosed” means no reliable public figure was found.

What Is Zaakpay?

Zaakpay operates in the Payment gateway space in India. Understanding a company like this starts with three questions: who is the customer, what painful problem is being solved, and why the solution is better than the alternatives. The sections below apply that lens to Zaakpay.

• Zaakpay is the merchant-facing payment gateway subsidiary of MobiKwik, the Gurugram-based fintech.
• It handles business payments within MobiKwik's payments business, including payments offered through WhatsApp in a partnership with Meta (reported).
• MobiKwik's prospectus says its payments and financial services businesses, including ZIP and ZIP EMI, rely on Zaakpay.
• The legal entity is Zaak ePayment Services Private Limited.

The Origin Story of Zaakpay

Every company starts from a noticed gap and a team willing to commit to closing it. Strong origin stories are specific: a clear problem, a founding team with relevant skills, and an early product that real customers could test. Founder-market fit, meaning the team’s lived experience or technical depth in the domain, tends to predict how fast a young company learns.

• Founders: Bipin Preet Singh, Upasana Taku.
• MobiKwik was founded in 2009 by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku; Zaakpay was introduced as its payment gateway in 2012 (reported), while a company-data listing gives the entity's founding year as 2010, so reports differ.
• MobiKwik relaunched its payment gateway in 2017, targeting $5 billion in transactions by March 2018 (reported).
• Ownership as of 31 March 2021: MobiKwik 90.2%, with Upasana Taku and Sequoia Capital India as other shareholders.

Key Milestones and Challenges

No startup grows in a straight line. Early years usually involve slow adoption, product rewrites, hiring mistakes and funding gaps. In the Payment gateway sector the common turning points are a first paying customer, a regulatory approval, a successful product demonstration or a funding round that lets the team invest ahead of demand. How a team responds to setbacks says more about resilience than any single headline.

• 2012: Zaakpay introduced as MobiKwik's payment gateway (reported).
• 2022: RBI rejected its payment aggregator application on a net worth shortfall; it was barred from onboarding new merchants and told to stop aggregator services for existing clients.
• October 2023: Zaakpay received in-principle RBI approval to operate as an online payment aggregator, subject to a CERT-In empanelled system audit.
• April 2025: Zaakpay received the final RBI certificate of authorisation as an online payment aggregator (announced 30 April 2025).

Zaakpay Funding and Investors

Funding history shows how much outside confidence a company has attracted and how long it can operate before needing more capital. Figures below are reported and may differ between sources; valuation figures are estimates unless the company has confirmed them.

• Zaakpay has no separate funding rounds found; it is a MobiKwik subsidiary, and Sequoia Capital India held a stake as of 2021.

How Does Zaakpay Make Money? (Business Model)

A business model describes who pays, how often and how much it costs to serve them. Strong models show repeat usage, improving margins with scale and acquisition channels that do not depend only on paid spend. Weak models show one-off sales, rising costs and growth that stops when spending stops. For companies selling to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises, sales cycles and contract size matter as much as headline growth.

• Zaakpay earns payment processing revenue from merchants through its gateway and aggregator services.
• Parent MobiKwik's blended payments take rate was reported at 0.64% in one quarter and compressing as zero-fee UPI grew from 35% to 40% of volume (parent-level).

The Numbers: Zaakpay Financials

Financial figures show whether growth is turning into a self-sustaining business. Small and private companies often disclose little, so any number below is included only if it was found in public reporting.

• FY20: gateway business net revenue of Rs 190 crore versus Rs 101 crore in FY19, about 13% of MobiKwik's net revenue (reported).
• Payment aggregator revenue reported as Rs 178.72 crore in FY22, Rs 14.24 crore in FY23 and Rs 8.3 crore in FY24 (reported; measures differ from FY20).
• Parent MobiKwik at Q3 FY25: 172 million registered users and a 5 million merchant network (parent figures).

Market Opportunity for Zaakpay

Market size is easy to exaggerate, so a useful approach separates the total market from the portion a company can realistically reach with its current product and distribution. The main forces behind demand in this sector are the scale of UPI, rising digital lending, growing participation in investing and insurance, and the digitisation of small merchants. Each of these widens the opportunity, but capital efficiency and execution decide who captures it.

• Serves online merchants needing payment acceptance in India, a market with strong developer-first competitors.
• A 2026 review describes it as a compliance-first gateway that tends to suit established customers with substantial revenue.

Technology and Product at Zaakpay

Technology is rarely the whole moat, but it drives speed, cost and customer experience. A practical way to assess it is to separate the capability the company controls from the commodity infrastructure it rents. In this sector the important factors are uptime, security, fraud controls, integrations with banks and the speed of onboarding customers.

• Payment gateway services including payments via WhatsApp; the RBI authorisation required a cybersecurity system audit.

Team and Culture at Zaakpay

Teams are the most important and least measurable asset of a young company. Look at how complementary the founders’ skills are, how deep the second layer of leadership is, and how the company hires and retains specialists. Culture shows up in small repeated behaviours: how quickly bad news travels upward and whether commitments to customers are kept.

• Parent MobiKwik is led by co-founders Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, who is Chairperson, Co-founder and COO.

Zaakpay Competitors: Competitive Landscape

A fair competitive analysis names direct rivals, adjacent players who could move into the space, and the customer’s default alternative. Durable advantages include proprietary data or technology, licences and approvals, brand trust, switching costs and cost leadership.

Risks and Challenges for Zaakpay

• Past RBI rejection in 2022 restricted merchant onboarding for a period and revenue fell sharply (Rs 178.72 crore in FY22 to Rs 8.3 crore in FY24 on that measure).
• MobiKwik's payments and lending businesses depend on Zaakpay.
• Zero-fee UPI compresses payment take rates.
• Regulatory risk: rules from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI or NPCI can change economics or business scope quickly.
• Concentration risk: dependence on a few partners, banks or payment rails can create single points of failure.

Risk is not a reason to avoid a company; it is a reason to price it correctly and to monitor the right indicators over time. Regulation in this sector is shaped by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Zaakpay Growth Outlook: What to Watch

• With the final licence in hand, the gateway can onboard merchants as an authorised payment aggregator.
• MobiKwik is pushing merchant acquiring as a growth area (parent commentary).
• Key indicators: transaction value, take rate, active users, credit quality and cost of acquiring each customer.
• Funding position: Whether Zaakpay can reach its next milestone before needing new capital.
• Regulation: Changes from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Industry Context: Where Zaakpay Fits

India's financial technology sector has been shaped by public digital infrastructure, especially UPI, along with Aadhaar-based identity, the account aggregator framework and regulation from the RBI, SEBI and IRDAI. These rails let startups reach customers and merchants at very low cost, but also expose them to fast-changing rules on licensing, data and lending conduct.

As payments become a low-margin commodity, fintech companies increasingly compete on distribution, merchant services, credit, wealth and insurance products. Sustainable profit usually depends on compliance strength, cost control and the quality of customer relationships rather than transaction volume alone.

For readers new to this field, a useful habit is to separate announcements from evidence. A plan, a partnership or a funding headline describes intent, while a delivered product, a paying customer or an audited financial statement describes results. Comparing the two over time shows how reliably a company turns promises into outcomes.

Bull Case and Bear Case for Zaakpay

An investment thesis is a short, testable statement of why a company could become far more valuable, together with what evidence would prove it wrong. The points below are general to this sector and are not forecasts for Zaakpay.

Bull case

• Digital payments and credit continue to grow, widening the market.
• Strong compliance and distribution create durable advantages.
• Cross-selling to existing customers can lift revenue per user.

Bear case

• Regulatory shifts can change economics overnight.
• Free or low-fee products make profit hard to reach.
• Fraud, outages and partner dependence can hurt trust.

Lessons Founders and Investors Can Take from Zaakpay

Studying a company in the Payment gateway space offers lessons that go beyond any single firm. The points below are general lessons for the sector and are not claims about Zaakpay.

• Compliance is a growth enabler in financial services, not just a cost, because licences decide what a company is allowed to sell.
• Distribution and customer trust often matter more than the underlying payment or lending technology.
• Products that earn from services and credit tend to be steadier than ones that depend on free transactions.
• Dependence on a single bank partner or rail creates risk that should be managed early.
• Fraud prevention and uptime are core product features, not back-office tasks.

How to Evaluate Zaakpay as a Startup

• Customer clarity: Can Zaakpay name its customer and the problem it solves in one sentence?
• Evidence of demand: Look for repeat customers, signed contracts or measurable usage rather than announcements alone.
• Economics: Check whether margins improve as volume grows.
• Execution: Compare announced timelines with what has actually been delivered.
• Funding runway: Estimate how long current capital lasts at the present spending rate.
• Regulatory standing: Confirm required approvals are in place.
• Customer concentration: Check whether a few customers account for most of the revenue.
• Management depth: Look for experienced leaders beyond the founders and a stable core team.

The Takeaway

Zaakpay is part of India’s growing Payment gateway ecosystem. The useful lesson from studying it is the discipline of asking structured questions about customers, economics, advantage and resilience. Companies that answer them well, repeatedly and under pressure are the ones that endure. Readers should treat any single report, ranking or funding headline as one input among many, and should re-check key facts against recent company announcements. Because public information on young companies is often limited, patience in verifying claims is part of good analysis. Public sources can also describe the same company in different ways, so it is worth checking dates, definitions and whether a figure refers to revenue, total income or transaction value, and whether it covers one entity or a wider group, before drawing conclusions. Small differences in rounding, currency conversion or reporting periods can also change how a figure reads. Comparing the same figure across several recent reports helps show whether it is stable or has changed over time. This article is educational and is not investment advice.

• Clear customers and repeat demand matter more than announcements.
• Regulation and capital needs shape how fast a startup in this sector can grow.
• Track a few leading indicators over time rather than one headline metric.

Zaakpay FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Zaakpay?

Zaakpay is a payment gateway and payment aggregator company based in India, a subsidiary of MobiKwik, that processes online payments for merchants. It is profiled in the Startup Deep Dive series, which explains business model, funding, competitors and risks.

Who founded Zaakpay?

Zaakpay was founded by Bipin Preet Singh, Upasana Taku, and the company reports a founding year of 2010.

How much funding has Zaakpay raised?

No reliable total funding figure is disclosed in the public sources reviewed. Funding figures are reported and may differ between sources, so readers should check the latest company announcements.

How does Zaakpay make money?

Zaakpay earns revenue from its Payment gateway products and services sold to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises. The exact revenue mix is described in the business model section and is not fully disclosed publicly.

Who are the competitors of Zaakpay?

Reported rivals include Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, CCAvenue. See the competitor comparison above for how they differ.

What are the main risks for Zaakpay?

Main risks include rules from the rbi, sebi, irdai or npci can change economics or business scope quickly, funding and capital needs, competition and regulation by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI. This is educational content, not investment advice.

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Source

Source: Publicly available data, published reports, industry research, and other credible sources.