Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, April 2025 — Cashfree Payments, India’s leading AI-native payments infrastructure and intelligence company, announced the appointment of Sameer Gandhi as its Chief Financial Officer. A growth-oriented leader and finance business partner with over two decades of experience across global financial institutions, Sameer will anchor Cashfree Payments’ financial strategy, enhancing the efficiency of financial operations and revenue planning. He joins at a time when the company is looking to accelerate its growth and become profitable in the coming quarters.
Sameer Gandhi brings with him a deep institutional pedigree and diverse, transnational work experience encompassing corporate finance, transformation, M&A, investment banking and consulting. Most recently, he served as Head of Finance at Visa India, where he led the company’s financial operations and financial planning. Prior to that, he held senior roles at Vodafone as General Manager of Financial Planning & Analysis for their enterprise and carrier businesses, and earlier at ING Australia as a Senior M&A Analyst. He began his career as an Analyst at Crisil and Citigroup, giving him a rare vantage point across both global banking and emerging markets finance.
Welcoming Sameer Gandhi to Cashfree Payments, Akash Sinha, CEO & Co-founder, Cashfree Payments said, “For over a decade, we have been simplifying payments to help businesses launch, grow, and succeed in the digital economy while ensuring that every single transaction is safe, secure, and compliant. The combination of receiving RBI licenses early, strong revenue growth, and early leadership in AI-native payments, has helped us create a strong foundation for our business. As we accelerate into our next stage of growth, Sameer’s proven track record in working for large institutions makes him a powerful addition to the leadership team. His expertise will be instrumental as we double down on sustainable growth, and strive towards our goal of becoming profitable.”
Sameer Gandhi’s appointment comes at a consequential moment in Cashfree Payments’ growth journey. The company has recently cemented a significant competitive advantage by becoming one of the first payments platforms in India to hold all three RBI payments licenses which include the Payment Aggregator (PA-PG), cross-border (PA-CB), and Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) licenses. This regulatory head start has translated into strong year-on-year revenue growth, with segments like cross-border payments recording a growth of 250%.
On his appointment, Sameer Gandhi, Chief Financial Officer, Cashfree Payments said, “I am excited to join Cashfree Payments at a pivotal phase where ambition meets discipline and the path to profitability begins to take clear shape. India presents a huge long-term opportunity in the digital payments sector, with an established fintech ecosystem. Being the first payments platform in India to hold all three RBI payments licenses gives a significant edge to Cashfree Payments over other players. I look forward to working as a strategic business partner – balancing cost discipline with funding innovation, and contributing to shared vision and goals by ensuring robust financial foundation and governance across all functions.”
Cashfree Payments currently processes over $80 billion transactions annually, serving more than a million businesses ranging from early-stage internet startups to publicly listed enterprises. The company recently raised USD 53 Million / INR 450 Crore in a funding round led by KRAFTON and existing investor Apis Growth Fund II, managed by Apis Partners (UK).
The company is also rapidly repositioning itself at the frontier of AI-native payments, with the launch of proprietary MCP servers that enable AI agents to process invoices and conduct payments autonomously, and Cashfree Here, which allows businesses to embed payments natively within AI chatbots.
About Cashfree Payments
Founded in 2015, Cashfree Payments is India’s largest payments platform, processing over $80 billion in transactions annually for more than a million businesses–from high-growth startups, ecommerce & D2C brands, SMBs, and enterprises.
Businesses use Cashfree Payments to collect payments across 180+ payment modes, provide seamless one-click checkout to their customers to improve conversions, and conduct cross-border payments across 176+ countries and 140+ currencies. Built for scale, Cashfree’s infrastructure handles an industry-leading 12,000 transactions per second, processing peak volumes without friction.
Alongside payments, Cashfree Payments offers Secure ID, an identity verification stack with a comprehensive suite of APIs and KYC components.
Cashfree Payments is backed by Y Combinator, Apis Partners, State Bank of India (SBI), KRAFTON, and was incubated by PayPal.
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