India’s fintech wave is shifting rapidly from stand-alone apps to composable finance: startups and incumbents are increasingly packaging financial services into other businesses’ customer journeys.
At the heart of this shift are white-label and BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service) platforms that let non-bank brands launch payments, wallets, cards, credit, and banking experiences under their own brand; without building heavy back-end stacks from scratch.
This model is lowering time-to-market, cutting compliance friction, and enabling product teams to focus on user experience and growth rather than plumbing.
Why white-label matters now
There are three forces making white-label fintech indispensable in India today.
First, demand: consumers want embedded finance inside apps they already use; retail marketplaces, neo-commerce players, travel apps, and even B2B SaaS.
Second, regulation and infrastructure (UPI, BBPS, faster settlements) now make it technically viable to plug into payments and banking rails quickly.
Third, cost and speed: launching a bank-like product in months through APIs is far cheaper and faster than a multi-year, capital-intensive build.
The result: even traditional businesses can become financial product distributors overnight.
What these platforms offer
White-label fintech providers typically expose modular APIs for payments, payouts, card issuing, virtual accounts, KYC, lending, and reporting. That modularity gives customers two options: pick a pre-built experience and brand it (white-label), or stitch APIs together for a custom product (BaaS). Both approaches reduce engineering lift and shift compliance and integrations to specialists.
For businesses that want to experiment with new monetisation levers; BNPL, co-branded cards, point-of-sale credit; these platforms act as accelerators.
Who’s leading the charge (providers to watch)
Below are some of the key solution providers shaping the white-label landscape in India today, and what they bring to the table.
M2P Fintech (end-to-end banking & payments stack): M2P has built a broad API stack covering payments, card issuing, and digital bank/lender-in-a-box capabilities. Its platform is designed to be cloud-native and developer-friendly, focusing on quick go-to-market for digital banks and fintechs that require full stack support.
That makes M2P a go-to for companies looking to launch digital banking products without building core banking systems.Setu (fast fintech APIs and embedded rails): Setu offers APIs that simplify access to payments, lending, and bill-payment rails and has been widely adopted by fintechs and banks seeking easy integrations. Its positioning as a developer-first API layer helps smaller fintech teams move from prototype to production quickly.
(Note: Setu was later acquired by Pine Labs, reflecting consolidation in the API infra space.)Cashfree (white-label payment gateway & payouts): Cashfree provides a white-label payment gateway that businesses can brand and integrate rapidly, plus a strong payouts suite that many marketplaces and platforms use to manage disbursements at scale.
Their product fits companies that prioritise high success-rates, broad payment mode coverage, and simple merchant onboarding.Zeta (card programs & issuer processing): For firms seeking programmable cards and next-gen issuer processing, Zeta offers cloud-native card issuing and processing that power co-branded and virtual card programs. Zeta’s stack is oriented to banks and fintechs that want flexible card controls, instant issuance, and loyalty integrations.
This is a common choice when a business wants to launch a bespoke card product quickly.Razorpay (payments plus business banking): Razorpay started as a payments gateway but has expanded into a suite of business banking and payouts tools (RazorpayX), making it attractive for platforms that want an integrated payments + banking solution under a single partner.
Their focus on SMBs and enterprises makes them a pragmatic option for embedded payments and payroll/disbursement use cases.
How businesses are using white-label platforms
Use cases are diverse. Marketplaces embed payments, virtual accounts, and escrow flows; neo-commerce players add BNPL through partner APIs; travel platforms offer co-branded cards and loyalty; enterprise SaaS vendors add payouts and corporate cards for customers.
The common playbook: pick the minimal set of APIs that unlock a revenue or retention lever, pilot quickly, and iterate based on user behaviour.
Risk, compliance and vendor selection: what to watch
White-labeling shifts operational and regulatory risks to vendors, but buyers must still conduct due diligence. Evaluate SLA performance (uptime, settlement speed), success rates across payment modes, KYC robustness, data-localisation controls, and how providers handle dispute resolution and chargebacks.
Integration simplicity matters, but equally important is product roadmaps; does the vendor plan to expand into adjacent services you might need later (e.g., lending, deposits, card issuing)?
Readiness checklist for product teams
Define the business metric you want to move (GMV, retention, checkout conversion).
Shortlist vendors by capability fit and references for similar use cases.
Run a 6–8 week pilot with clear KPIs (success-rate uplift, onboarding time, cost per transaction).
Validate compliance and incident response processes.
Plan for an exit or migration path; avoid lock-in by maintaining abstraction layers in your stack.
The evolving landscape: consolidation and new entrants
The market is maturing. We’re seeing consolidation (e.g., Pine Labs’ acquisition of Setu) and the arrival of niche infra players and GenAI startups promising automation in underwriting, reconciliation and compliance. Expect more specialised vendors for credit underwriting, AML screening, and personalized financial experiences. This evolution increases choice but also raises the bar for procurement and integration discipline.
Final thoughts (when to build vs. buy)
If your competitive advantage is the financial product itself (novel credit algorithm, proprietary risk model), a build-heavy approach may make sense. But for most businesses where speed, brand control, and user experience matter more than owning the plumbing, white-label platforms provide a compelling balance of speed, compliance, and scale.
The best teams use white-label providers to validate product-market fit quickly, then invest in selective in-house capabilities as the business and margins scale.
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