The startup, which is backed by Pravega Ventures, HDFC Bank, and PayPal, has closed its first acquisition in the space of bill payments. It has acquired fintech startup Digiledge, which offers bill payments and Central Bank Backed Digital Currency or CBDC. The company will now operate as a fully owned subsidiary of Mintoak.
Speaking with ET, Raman Khanduja, chief executive officer of Mintoak, said that the company has been profitable for some time and he wanted to grow into adjoining digital business areas through the acquisition route by using the cash that the core payments business generates.
Mintoak powers HDFC Bank’s Smarthub Vyapar application and also works with Axis Bank and the State Bank of India (SBI) to power their QR code-based retail merchant payments business. Mintoak’s software stack helps banks compete with the likes of PhonePe, Paytm, and BharatPe, which dominate the QR code payments ecosystem in the country.
“Digiledge has not raised any institutional funding. They have built systems for bill payments, which we can integrate into our existing application for merchants,” Khanduja said. The startup works with lenders like Federal Bank, Karnataka Bank, Indian Bank, and Canara Bank, he added.
Having been profitable for the past few years, Mintoak closed FY2024 with a net profit of Rs 21 crore. Its total revenue stood at Rs 83.8 crore.
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Khanduja said that currently, Mintoak is operating at an annualised revenue run rate of Rs 120 crore. Mintoak serves three million merchants, helping them process Rs 30,000 crore worth of transactions per month. It has recently grown its business outside India, working with banks in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, and Mauritius.While bill payments will be the first vertical that Mintoak wants to integrate through the acquisition, it is looking at using Digiledge’s CBDC applications to help merchants accept the digital currency format.
“While these are very early days of CBDC adoption in India, there is already some buzz in international markets, and through CBDC acceptance capabilities, banks can future-proof their merchant applications,” he said.
