Zoho Enters the Digital Payments Race with RBI-Approved ‘Zoho Pay’

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Indian software major Zoho Corporation is preparing to launch its much-awaited consumer payments platform, Zoho Pay, marking the company’s formal entry into India’s rapidly growing fintech market. The app, currently in its testing phase, is expected to roll out in the coming months.

Zoho Pay will allow users to send and receive money, make merchant payments, and pay bills within a unified, easy-to-use interface. The product is designed to work as both a standalone payments app and an integrated feature within Arattai, Zoho’s in-house messaging platform.

By embedding financial transactions into a chat environment, Zoho aims to create a seamless user experience, allowing users to chat and transact without switching between multiple apps. Industry experts view this as a strategic move to compete with established players like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm, while offering a distinct “social-plus-finance” model.

A company executive familiar with the project said, “Zoho Pay is built for convenience. It blends communication and commerce, helping users manage payments where conversations naturally happen.”

Zoho had earlier secured a Payment Aggregator licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), enabling it to process consumer transactions and integrate payments within its suite of business and consumer products.

The company’s long-term vision goes beyond peer-to-peer payments. Insiders suggest that Zoho plans to develop a full-stack financial ecosystem, potentially expanding into areas such as lending, insurance, and wealth management in the future.

With over 100 million global users across its business apps, Zoho’s entry into consumer fintech is seen as a major step in diversifying its portfolio beyond enterprise software. The move aligns with India’s broader push for local digital infrastructure and “Made in India” innovation in payments.

As Zoho Pay readies for launch, it could reshape how Indian users interact with payments, bringing together the simplicity of messaging and the power of financial technology under one homegrown platform.