PayPal India hits pause on domestic payments business

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Editor's note: It looks like PayPal, the American payments processing giant, is beginning to scale down its domestic business in India, according to multiple partners and recently departed employees who spoke with The Morning Context. PayPal India, these people say, has intimated card network partners that they are “pausing” their domestic business and that they will stop onboarding new merchants from March 2021. The company will continue to offer its cross-border payments service in India. “PayPal is saying that it will stop onboarding new merchants but will continue to service existing customers. This clearly means if you will not add new ones then slowly the business will shut down,” says an industry executive aware of the development. PayPal has intimated Visa and Mastercard as well as the Reserve Bank of India that they are pausing their domestic business, two industry executives confirmed. The Morning Context could not independently verify this from Mastercard, Visa, and RBI. Everyone who confirmed the news spoke on condition of anonymity. “PayPal had close to 250 merchant partners. All travel portals were partners, and EaseMyTrip was our largest …