Razorpay appoints Arif Khan as chief innovation officer

Razorpay has announced the reappointment of Arif Khan as its chief innovation officer (CIO), said a statement issued today.
A veteran in the banking and financial services industry, Khan brings his expertise in working with various stakeholders and an in-depth understanding of the sector spanning over two decades. He has held leadership positions in NPCI, MasterCard, HDFC Bank, among others.

The appointment comes at a time when the company has entered the offline payments space with its recent acquisition of point-of-sale payments startup Ezetap.

Prior to joining Razorpay again, he served as the chief digital officer at NPCI where he led strategic planning pertaining to digital transformation for the organisation.

During his first stint at Razorpay from 2017 to 2019, he led several key initiatives and contributed to building a holistic business architecture for the company. Further, he was instrumental in building the foundation for the firm's banking services and established strong external stakeholder relationships. He has also served as the senior business leader at Mastercard where he was responsible for driving growth for the company’s payment gateway platform and Mastercard’s ‘Simplify Commerce’.

“During Arif's previous stint with us, he played a crucial role in establishing several foundational pillars of our banking capabilities and nurtured strong relations with various external stakeholders. We are confident that his experience of working with leading financial institutions and especially his ability to influence diverse groups to deliver end-objectives will help us in furthering our vision of building the financial backbone for small businesses in India," said Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder at Razorpay.

In his second tenure as the CIO of the firm, Khan will lead the banking, risk management, regulatory affairs, and public policy teams toward the larger organisational vision of fine-tuning the company's offerings in the digital payments space. He will be playing a key role in leading engagement with banks, networks, regulators, and strategic partners to drive innovation at the company, and will be responsible for accelerating the adoption of new payment and banking platforms and products.

“The financial landscape has seen a monumental change in the last couple of years. Supported by regulations, the Indian digital payments industry is growing tremendously and is set to triple to $10 trillion by 2026. Razorpay has spearheaded several innovations with its cutting-edge solutions and I believe this story of innovation and disruption is going to continue and grow stronger," said Khan.

With an $80 billion TPV as of April 2022, the company is now eyeing a 10-12 million merchant base by next year. Marquee investors such as Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital, TCV, GIC, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Y Combinator and MasterCard have invested a total of $741.5 million through Series A, B, C, D, E and F funding.