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Fintech platform BharatPe on Tuesday said it has received in-principle authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as an online Payment Aggregator (PA), as it fights a fierce court battle with its former co-founder and Managing Director Ashneer Grover over a Rs 88.6 crore fraud case.

The company said that the in-principle approval has been awarded to Resilient Payments Private Ltd, a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Resilient Innovations Private Ltd (BharatPe).

"At BharatPe, we have been committed to empowering offline merchants and kirana store owners in the country and have already built a network of 1 crore merchants across more than 400 cities," said Nalin Negi, CFO and interim CEO, BharatPe.

The in-principle approval, he added, "will help catapult our expansion plans and enable us to reach out to millions of more unbanked and underserved merchants, providing digital payment acceptance solutions".

BharatPe said it will now commence work on fulfilling the said conditions within the prescribed timeline and launch the said online PA business upon the receipt of the final authorisation from RBI.

The company is one of the leaders in the UPI offline transactions, processing more than 18 crore UPI transactions per month (annualised transaction processed value of over $24 billion in payments).

The company has already facilitated the disbursement of loans close to Rs 8,500 crore to over 450,000 merchants.

BharatPe said its point of sale (POS) business now processes payments of over $4 billion annually on its machines.

Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court on Monday asked Grover's counsel to advise his client to maintain decorum following his termination from the fintech company while hearing a plea filed by the company, seeking orders to restrain Grover and his kin from making defamatory statements against the company.

"This social media has brought us down to this level. Ask him to maintain decorum," said Justice Navin Chawla.