Jio Money’s Anirban Mukherjee to head PayU operations in India

Naspers-owned digital payments service provider PayU has announced the appointment of Anirban Mukherjee as India chief executive officer (CEO). He will be replacing Amrish Rau, who will be heading broader fintech partnerships and investments at Naspers, a South African media and e-commerce group.

Mukherjee, who was co-CEO of Reliance Payments Solutions till recently, which owns and operates Jio Money, will be reporting directly to Laurent Le Moal, CEO of PayU Global.

Apart from leading PayU’s India business, Mukherjee will be a part of the global leadership team at the company, driving credit and financial services in high-growth markets. He will also be in charge of operations and businesses at PayU India and will be responsible for investment opportunities for Naspers’ fintech growth. Mukherjee will also lead new product development at PayU India into remittances and credit. 

“The business and regulatory environment in India creates great opportunities for PayU to further build on its strong position in payments and launch innovative new products and services, including offline solutions and credit,” said Le Moal, CEO of PayU Global, in a statement. He added that the company stood to gain from Mukherjee’s experience for its next phase of innovation, which will be focused on payments, credit, and fintech investments.

A payments and fintech veteran, Mukherjee was managing director and group head with Standard Chartered Bank and has also worked with Capital One in the US.

PayU has been focused on growing its consumer-focused credit business in India through multiple investments in the space including investments in consumer lending platform PaySense and ZestMoney. The company had also received an NBFC (non-banking financial company) licence in September 2018. 

A report in December by Naspers had stated that India accounts for over half of payment transactions on the PayU platform.