When you hear that a company scaled from processing payments worth $10 billion in 2020 to nearly $900 billion annually today—while cutting the cost per transaction by nearly 45%—your eyebrows should raise. If that company is Juspay, this is exactly what fintech insiders are talking about.
The Rise of Juspay: Fast, Lean, and Scalable
Founded in 2012 by Vimal Kumar and Sheetal Lalwani, Juspay began with a single laptop and a vision: to solve India’s messy, unreliable payment experience. Think of those endless OTPs, failed checkouts, and clunky interfaces no one wanted to fight with. They built a payments orchestration layer that could work behind the scenes for giants like Amazon, Flipkart, Uber, Visa, Mastercard—smoothing the flow of transactions for millions of daily users.
By FY24, Juspay reported ₹319.3 Cr in revenues (up 50% from FY23) and shrank losses by 10%, while processing an astounding daily volume—powers over 175 million transactions for 1,200 global businesses. Today, its global annual payments processing figure approaches $900 billion (₹7.2 lakh Cr)—up from about $10 billion (₹80,000 Cr) just five years ago. And it lowered cost per transaction by nearly half—a feat that’s more than just engineering finesse. It’s economics. It’s scale. It’s trust.
The Hyperswitch Gamble and Open‑Source That Sparked a Shift
In early 2025, Juspay open‑sourced its routing engine, branded Hyperswitch, inviting merchants to self‑host and customize their payment flows. This move came just as top fintech heavyweights like PhonePe, Razorpay, Cashfree—and even Paytm—announced they were moving away from third‑party orchestration platforms toward direct merchant integration.
It may sound like a blow, but Juspay frames it differently: they say orchestration is optional—and Hyperswitch gives merchants full control. Meanwhile, they also hold a Payment Aggregator licence from RBI, positioning themselves directly in competition with merchant platforms they once served.
In effect, they became both the Swiss-army tool and the power behind fintech’s evolution.
We dissolve friction. Every failed transaction is a broken dream.”
— Vimal Kumar, Juspay Founder
Who’s Faring Well in This Payments Orchestra
Juspay isn’t alone in the ecosystem. Let’s look at how peers and rivals are shaping up:
Pine Labs – The Offline Giant
A legacy POS player turned merchant platform legend, Pine Labs now boasts over 100,000 merchants and 850,000 PoS terminals across India and Southeast Asia. Valued at over $5 billion, it’s a heavyweight in offline payments infrastructure.
BharatPe – Merchant-first Fintech
Focused on small kiranas and grocery merchants, BharatPe passed ₹1,000 Cr in revenue in FY23 and turned profitable, offering digital payments, lending, and loyalty tools. It scales largely offline, building trust at the grassroots level.
Sarvatra Technologies – Old‑school but Crucial
It runs PaaS infrastructure across 600+ co‑operative banks, handling over 50% of India’s UPI and IMPS volume via its EFT switch. It may not trend on Twitter, but it’s the plumbing behind India’s banking rails.
Razorpay and Cashfree – The Platform Bet
Post‑scripture orchestrators: both firms are now investing heavily in their own in‑house routing tech (Aggregator + Optimizer), cutting reliance on external systems for better margin control and compliance . Their success will hinge on engineering execution and merchant adoption.
The Payment Power Index
| Player | Volume (2025) | Cost Per Transaction | Achilles’ Heel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juspay | $900B | $0.0015 (lowest) | Global expansion |
| Razorpay | $100B+ | $0.0028 | Profitability |
| Pine Labs | $85B | $0.0032 | Legacy systems |
| Cashfree | $60B | $0.0021 | Brand visibility |
Why the Numbers Are So Compelling
There are few startups that hit T‑shirt‑sleeve engineering and financial growth as well as Juspay:
- Volume at Scale: From $10 billion to $900 billion in five years is not hype—it’s industrial-level throughput.
- Cost Efficiency: Cutting transaction cost per unit by 45% isn’t magic—it’s smart routing, orchestration, dynamic fallback, and operational excellence.
- Regulatory Trust: RBI’s PA licence gives Juspay legitimacy, and Hyperswitch gives flexibility. Together, they unlock both enterprise and scale merchant trust.
- Global Reach: From Asia to North America and Europe, their orchestration platform is operating at scale globally, even as Indian fintechs move to self-host it.
But It’s Not All Smooth Sailing
Major gateways—PhonePe, Razorpay, Cashfree, Paytm—have dropped Juspay orchestration integrations, citing cost, data control, and long-term ambitions.. That’s a public signal: reduced alliances can shave volume off Juspay’s orchestration role.
Still, they’re doubling down on Hyperswitch and their aggregator licence. The goal: be platform-agnostic, scalable, powerful—and yes, an alternative to the very companies once aligned with.
The Bigger Picture: India’s Payment Layer War
India is projected to handle hundreds of billions in digital payments annually. UPI volumes alone reached trillions of dollars—and fintech firms are in a race to own both the rails and the value above them .
In that race, infrastructure players like Juspay, Sarvatra, Pine Labs, and BharatPe represent different strategic bets:
- Juspay: Orchestration and PA licence, global ambitions, modular OSS route.
- Razorpay/Cashfree: Direct integration, control, margin retention.
- Pine Labs/BharatPe: Merchant-first distribution and embedded finance.
- Sarvatra: Banking middleware backbone.
Looking Ahead
Will Juspay cross $1 trillion in processed volume soon? Maybe. Will its open‑source model attract global SMBs and enterprises? Quite possible. But will they maintain dominance as giants internalize orchestration? That’s the big test.
Still, when a company reprocessed nearly a thousandfold in scale, cut costs in half, and kept up near-0‑downtime reliability—while rewriting how India pays—you don’t just read their story. You feel it.
