PayPal India will shut down its payment gateway business in India from April 1, 2021 onward, but it will continue to provide payments services for cross-border trade, a spokesperson from the company said in a statement. The company processed $1.4 billion worth of sales for more than 360,000 merchants in the country in 2020, they said. The company at present has a payments gateway business and cross-border trading platform, enabling local businesses to export their products abroad. "We believe PayPal can have the greatest positive impact in India’s economic recovery by pivoting our business to support our customers where they need us most. From 1 April 2021, we will focus all our attention on enabling more international sales for Indian businesses, and shift focus away from our domestic products in India. This means we will no longer offer domestic payment services within India from 1 April," a spokesperson for PayPal said. While it is unclear why PayPal has chose to shut its Indian payment gateway business, in the last few months the company has run into a few issues. Non-compliance with money laundering rules In December 2020, the Finance Ministry’s Financial Intelligence Unit issued a ₹96 lakh penalty against against PayPal Payments Private Limited over non-compliance with norms laid out in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA). The bone of contention in this case is that PayPal failed to register itself with the FIU for several years. While PayPal said that it is a payments intermediary and not…
