Xflow Launches India Collections on 10 September 2026
On 10 September 2026, Xflow, a cross-border B2B payments fintech backed by Stripe Ventures and PayPal Ventures, launched India Collections — a product that lets businesses anywhere in the world accept payments from Indian customers via UPI, credit and debit cards, and net banking without establishing a legal entity in India or opening a rupee bank account. Payments are settled in the merchant's own currency — US dollars, euros, British pounds, or another supported currency — with the currency conversion and settlement handled by Xflow's banking partner HSBC. The product routes a foreign merchant's payment checkout as a domestic Indian transaction, giving Indian customers the same local payment experience they have with Indian-incorporated businesses. UPI alone accounts for approximately 85 percent of India's digital payment volume, and its availability has historically been restricted to merchants with Indian entities; India Collections removes that restriction for the first time at scale.
What India Collections Enables and Who It Targets
India Collections is designed for global businesses that sell to Indian customers but have not historically been able to accept payments efficiently from India without first setting up a local subsidiary, opening a rupee account, and navigating India's cross-border payment aggregator regulatory framework. When an Indian customer pays through a merchant that has integrated India Collections, the payment is processed using Indian domestic payment rails — the UPI system, card networks such as Visa and Mastercard, or net banking from any major Indian bank — exactly as any domestic Indian payment would be. The merchant receives the payment settled in their home currency. Target customers include global SaaS companies with Indian user bases, digital content and gaming platforms monetising Indian audiences, professional services companies billing Indian enterprise clients, and e-commerce operators selling physical or digital goods to Indian consumers who would otherwise face lower payment success rates or limited payment options.
The Role of HSBC and NPCI Cross-Border Infrastructure
HSBC serves as the banking partner for Xflow's India Collections, handling the foreign exchange conversion and settlement leg of each transaction. Separately, NPCI — the National Payments Corporation of India — has been building real-time foreign exchange settlement infrastructure for cross-border UPI transactions in partnership with HSBC India, enabling FX conversion at the point of a UPI transaction rather than through a delayed multi-day processing cycle. Under this arrangement, HSBC India provides real-time FX rates during the cross-border UPI payment, allowing the transaction to clear as a domestic UPI payment on the Indian side while settling in foreign currency on the receiving merchant's side. Xflow's India Collections product builds on this infrastructure to offer a full-stack inbound payment product that includes merchant onboarding, API integration for checkout, and automatic currency settlement — handling the regulatory and banking complexity that individual merchants would otherwise need to solve independently.
Xflow's Background and Regulatory Foundation
Xflow was founded by Anand Balaji, Ashwin Bhatnagar, and Abhijit Chandrasekaran. The company raised investment from Stripe Ventures and PayPal Ventures, announced in February 2026. Xflow secured India's cross-border payment aggregator licence from the Reserve Bank of India in December 2025 — the key regulatory milestone that permits the company to operate as a licensed intermediary for cross-border payment flows into and out of India under RBI oversight. The aggregator licence was a prerequisite for offering India Collections legally and enabled the September 2026 product launch. Prior to India Collections, Xflow focused primarily on outbound cross-border payments: helping Indian businesses and freelancers receive payments from foreign clients. India Collections adds the inbound direction, enabling the full two-way cross-border payments picture.
What India Collections Means for the Indian Digital Economy
India Collections directly addresses a friction point that has historically constrained the monetisation of India's internet user base by foreign businesses. India has over 900 million internet users and an expanding middle class with growing digital spending, but foreign businesses without local entities have faced structural barriers to accepting payments from Indian customers at high success rates. The inability to offer UPI — the dominant payment rail — meant lower conversion rates for international merchants serving Indian audiences compared with domestic competitors. India Collections removes the entity requirement while providing full local payment method access. For Indian businesses building global digital products, the Xflow model also signals the evolving reciprocity in India's cross-border payment infrastructure: as it becomes easier for the world to collect from India, the expectation grows that Indian products collecting from global customers through comparable infrastructure will face similarly streamlined treatment.
The Bottom Line
On 10 September 2026, Xflow — backed by Stripe Ventures and PayPal Ventures and holding India's cross-border payment aggregator licence since December 2025 — launched India Collections with HSBC as the banking partner. The product lets global businesses accept UPI, cards, and net banking payments from Indian customers without incorporating in India, with settlement in the merchant's home currency. India Collections builds on NPCI-HSBC real-time FX settlement infrastructure for cross-border UPI transactions. The product targets global SaaS, digital content, gaming, and e-commerce businesses with Indian user bases that have historically struggled to monetise Indian audiences efficiently. For Indian businesses and developers building payments infrastructure or software with cross-border payment requirements, India Collections is the clearest recent demonstration of how NPCI's cross-border UPI framework and RBI's payment aggregator licensing regime are enabling a new generation of two-way payment products between India and the rest of the world.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Xflow India Collections and when did it launch?+
Xflow India Collections is a cross-border payments product that launched on 10 September 2026. It lets businesses anywhere in the world accept payments from Indian customers via UPI, credit and debit cards, and net banking without establishing a legal entity in India or opening a rupee bank account. Payments settle in the merchant's home currency — US dollars, euros, or another supported currency — with currency conversion and settlement handled by Xflow's banking partner HSBC. Xflow is a cross-border B2B payments fintech founded by Anand Balaji, Ashwin Bhatnagar, and Abhijit Chandrasekaran, backed by Stripe Ventures and PayPal Ventures. The company secured India's cross-border payment aggregator licence from the Reserve Bank of India in December 2025, the regulatory prerequisite that made the September 2026 product launch possible.
How does Xflow India Collections work and what is HSBC's role?+
Xflow India Collections routes a foreign business's payment checkout as a local Indian transaction. When an Indian customer pays through a merchant that has integrated India Collections, the payment is processed using Indian domestic payment rails — the UPI system, Visa and Mastercard card networks, or net banking — exactly as any domestic Indian payment would be. HSBC acts as the banking partner handling the foreign exchange conversion and settlement: the Indian customer's rupee payment is converted to the merchant's home currency at the prevailing FX rate and settled to the merchant's foreign bank account. NPCI and HSBC India have built real-time FX settlement infrastructure for cross-border UPI transactions that allows FX conversion to happen at the point of the UPI transaction rather than through delayed processing. Xflow's product builds on this infrastructure while adding merchant onboarding, API integration for checkout, and ongoing settlement reporting.
Why was it difficult for global businesses to accept Indian UPI payments before India Collections?+
Before Xflow India Collections, global businesses wanting to accept payments from Indian customers generally needed either to set up an Indian subsidiary and obtain domestic payment licences — a months-long process with ongoing compliance obligations — or to accept that Indian customers would use international card payments, which Indian issuing banks frequently decline for cross-border transactions, producing lower payment success rates. UPI, which handles roughly 85 percent of India's digital payment volume, was effectively unavailable to foreign merchants without a domestic Indian entity. India Collections removes the entity requirement by routing payments through Xflow's RBI-licensed cross-border payment aggregator infrastructure and HSBC's banking partnership, so global businesses can offer Indian customers the full range of domestic payment options — including UPI — without incorporation in India.
What does Xflow India Collections mean for Indian businesses and software developers?+
For Indian businesses and developers building software products with payment functionality, Xflow India Collections illustrates the expanding NPCI and RBI framework for two-way cross-border payment flows. NPCI's real-time FX settlement infrastructure for cross-border UPI and the RBI's cross-border payment aggregator licensing regime together enable a new category of inbound and outbound payment products that was not technically or legally feasible two years ago. For Indian SaaS companies competing globally, the India Collections model demonstrates that regulatory progress is lowering barriers for foreign companies to monetise Indian users — increasing competitive pressure in India's digital economy. For Indian fintech and payments engineers, the NPCI-HSBC real-time FX settlement infrastructure that underlies India Collections is the technical reference for how cross-border UPI transactions settle at scale, relevant for teams building products that interact with or integrate cross-border payment rails.
Written by
TechPillow Team
Sharing insights on technology, product development, and the Indian tech ecosystem.
