PayMate India Ltd, the B2B payments company backed by Visa Inc. and Lightbox Ventures, has been unable to pay employees their full salaries for as long as 12 months. The company said it cannot do so until a proposed acquisition deal with DigiAsia Corp closes and fresh capital flows in.
The Mumbai-based company, which once sought a ₹1,500 crore public listing in India, told Mint that outstanding employee dues and settlements are expected to be cleared by 30 June, once its transaction with DigiAsia Corp. and a funding round it expects to follow are completed. What was announced in 2024 as a $400-million deal with a cash component of at least $25 million has since been reworked. According to PayMate, "The DigiAsia deal is a stock swap, with no cash involved."
This deal is vital for Paymate as the company has been counting on that deal to meet its payroll obligations.
The company said the transaction remains in its "final stage of satisfying closing conditions," and that it will pursue external funding post-closing without providing further details on the funding plans.
This comes even as senior leadership exits continue and overseas operations shrink, multiple persons with direct knowledge of the development told Mint.
People familiar with the matter said that in the latest exit, Sanjit Bose, global head of solutions and partnerships at PayMate India Pvt. Ltd has moved out. Independent director Kevin Christopher Phalen also exited in July, according to his LinkedIn account.
In November, Mint had reported exits of several senior executives, including chief commercial officer Rakesh Khanna, senior vice-president and general counsel Nanda Harish, and vice-president and global HR head Pooja Chauhan.
Broken deadlines
The company has also received legal notices from employees over delayed salaries and unpaid full-and-final settlements, according to at least three people familiar with the matter.
Several current and former employees told Mint that salary payments remained irregular for months, with pending dues and settlements stretching across current and former staff.
Another former employee said repeated assurances on repayments failed to materialise. “Every time we were told ‘next week’ or ‘next month’, but there was never any clarity on when dues would actually be paid,” the person said.
One former employee confirmed that they have sent a legal notice to the company over unpaid dues. Mint has also seen a copy of the notice.
PayMate, however, denied that any labour lawsuits had been filed by employees against the company in any jurisdiction.
The latest assurance comes after the company's earlier repayment timelines failed to materialise. In response to Mint’s queries on salary delays in July, PayMate had said the issue would be resolved by the end of the month. However, dues remained unpaid.
In November, Mint reported that PayMate had shut down its West Asian operations and was seeking to raise a fresh $20 million after a key investor failed to transfer the committed funds for over 9 months.
At the time, the company also told employees that pending dues would be cleared the following month, but payments were delayed again.
The prolonged liquidity crunch follows PayMate’s financial position coming under pressure after the Reserve Bank of India’s crackdown on intermediary-routed card transactions in 2024, a move that affected PayMate and several peers in the B2B payments ecosystem.
Ripple effect
The company had earlier withdrawn its ₹1,500 crore initial public offering proposal after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) returned its draft prospectus in 2023. Founded in 2006 by Ajay Adiseshann, Probir Roy and Vishvanathan Subramanian, PayMate enables enterprises to automate B2B payments and commercial card transactions across supply chains. The company has raised over $40 million from investors, including Visa, Lightbox, Mayfield Fund, and Brand Capital.
The company also reiterated plans to pursue a public listing in India after the completion of the DigiAsia transaction. “The company is also on track to initiate a public listing process in India post-closing,” it said in its mailed responses on Sunday.
The development comes even as public market investors and late-stage backers increasingly scrutinise governance, profitability and financial discipline across new-age technology firms.
The fintech firm also confirmed that the India business had also been ‘right-sized’ to align with its current operational priorities.
“The APAC business is currently the company’s strongest performing geography and continues to grow,” PayMate said.
