Razorpay, rivals eye offline PoS deals

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Editor's note: It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call 2021 a landmark year for payments in India. The space has been buzzing with activity for the past few months—be it fund-raises at ever-higher valuations by startups such as CRED and BharatPe or the IPO filings of Paytm and MobiKwik or significant policy changes by the Reserve Bank of India.  The stage is set for massive shifts. “Some or the other consolidation is happening. There are times when you get so confused as everybody is exploring M&A today. That's the state of fintech currently. With RBI’s policy changes on one side, small players burdened with compliance cost, bigger players getting next fund and getting into new segments, the market is in utter chaos,” says an industry executive, asking not to be named. There are two things happening in payments right now about which we have already written: First, RBI’s new guidelines on regulating payment aggregators and payment gateways are expected to make it tough for smaller online payment processors to continue, on account of stricter compliance and capital requirements. This means the larger …