Manipal Payment and Identity Solutions Ltd

Manipal Payment and Identity Solutions Limited

Incorporated in 2008 and part of The Manipal Group, Manipal Payment and Identity Solutions manufactures and personalises payment cards for banks and fintechs, which was 61.0% of FY26 revenue of ₹1,327 cr. It also makes excise tax stamps, holograms and RFID tags (13.6%), runs RTO counters and secure logistics (11.3%), and prints cheque books, welcome kits and government identity cards (9.1%). It billed 86.20 mn chip cards in FY26, holding 31.7% of India's credit and debit card issuance.

Auditor : Manian & Rao         BRLMs : Motilal Oswal, Axis Capital, ICICI Securities, IIFL Capital, Nuvama Wealth

Disclaimer - Delta Partners (public market division under Dexter Capital) is not a SEBI registered Investment Advisor and this report does not constitute a recommendation but is only prepared for educational purposes. We are a SEBI registered CAT III AIF and we (our team members including our directors) may or may not apply to IPO. Queries: shubham@deltainvest.in This note is not reviewed by our CIO - Devendra Agrawal, CFA. It is prepared by our team of Investment Analysts, and is reviewed by our senior team members. 

Delta's View: Skip

Manipal Payments is one of the leading payment card manufacturers in India. It has served SBI, Bank of India and Indian Bank for over 15 years, and counts 12 public sector banks, 22 private banks and 60 fintechs among its customers. The end market is not growing, and the headwinds look structural :-

● Debit cards are 84.3% of the cards it billed in FY26, and debit card transactions in India have fallen 67% since 2021.

● UPI has taken that volume, with transactions up eight-fold since 2021. RBI attributes the decline in debit card usage to digital wallets, UPI and credit card adoption.

● Manipal's volumes have been moderating for three years and other players of size are also seeing the downtrend. Seshaasai's payment revenue is down 32% since FY24, the Indian entity of IDEMIA and Giesecke & Devrient fell 24% and 37% in FY25, and in China, Goldpac's card segment is down 39% since 2022.

● Revenue here moves with mandates rather than demand. Standalone revenue fell from ₹426 cr in FY17 to ₹240 cr in FY22, then jumped to ₹1,029 cr in FY24 on the chip card mandate and the post-COVID issuance catch-up. On the positive side, margins have expanded sharply since FY22, capex needs are low, cash generation is decent and the balance sheet is now almost free of debt. The parent, Manipal Technologies, is a commercial printing and banking services business, part of a group that has served Indian banks since 1948.

● At 17.6x EV/EBITDA and 31.9x earnings, the valuation appears on the higher side when growth ahead does not look favourable and the company has not set out a plan for it. We would stay away.

At the current GMP of ~1% (11 September 2026), the issue points to no meaningful listing gains. 

● Manipal Payment and Identity Solutions manufactures and personalises payment cards for banks and fintechs, which was 61.0% of FY26 revenue of ₹1,327 cr, with excise tax stamps, cheque books, government identity work and secure logistics making up the rest. It builds the plastic or metal card at Manipal, then encodes the chip and prints the customer's name and number. In FY26 it billed 86.20 mn cards, which per the F&S report gives it 31.7% of India's credit and debit card issuance, split 36.4% of credit and 30.9% of debit. Globally, it ranked 11th on the Nilson list of chip card shipments for CY2023 and was the highest ranked Indian company on it.

● It served over 300 customers in FY26 across 12 public sector banks, 22 private banks, 11 small finance banks, 78 co-operative banks and 60 fintechs, with SBI, Bank of India and Indian Bank as customers for 15 years or more. Banks do not switch card vendors easily. Every card programme is certified with the network on a particular vendor's line, and the bank's customer data is decrypted and encoded inside that vendor's audited environment, so moving means re-certifying rather than just re-ordering. Contracts run three to five years with private banks and fintechs, one to five years with public sector banks and one to three years with payments banks and small finance banks. Each card sold also books its own repeat order, since cards carry a three to five year expiry and the bank has to reissue on schedule no matter how little the customer used it. Customers of five years or more accounted for 72.70% of revenue in FY26, 68.78% in FY25 and 79.51% in FY24.

● Manipal billed 86.20 mn cards in FY26, of which 72.66 mn or 84.3% were debit cards and only 13.54 mn were credit. RBI's Payments System Report shows debit card transactions falling from 408.7 crore in 2021 to 133.6 crore in 2025, a 67% drop, with transacted value down from ₹7.4 lakh crore to ₹4.5 lakh crore, and RBI's own reading is that debit cards are now used mainly for ATM withdrawals rather than purchases.

● The UPI transaction volumes rose from 1,530 crore in the first half of 2021 to 12,191 crore in the second half of 2025, an eight-fold jump over the same window in which debit card usage collapsed. RBI's own explanation for the decline is that it is potentially driven by the rise of digital wallets, UPI, and credit card adoption. Spending has moved to credit cards, where transactions rose 2.6 times and value from ₹8.9 lakh crore to ₹23.2 lakh crore over the same period, but credit is only 15.7% of what Manipal bills. Debit card issuance itself has not stopped, since banks issue on account opening and reissue on expiry regardless of use.

● This gets reflected in Manipal's volumes, with cards billed moderating from 92.00 mn in FY24 to 86.15 mn in FY25 and 86.20 mn in FY26. Seshaasai, the other large domestic player and listed since September 2025, has had it worse, with payment solutions revenue down from ₹1,052 cr in FY24 to ₹720 cr in FY26. The Indian arms of the global players moved the same way in FY25, with IDEMIA Syscom India's revenue down 23.6% from ₹2,016 cr in FY24 and Giesecke & Devrient MS India's down 36.7% from ₹808 cr (although a significant portion of both is SIM cards and biometrics rather than payment cards). Every player of size in this market has seen volumes or revenue contract over the last two years.

● Goldpac, China's largest card manufacturer and the only Chinese firm certified by all six international card schemes, saw revenue fall from RMB 1.53 bn in 2022 to RMB 1.10 bn in 2024, in the market where wallets displaced cards well before UPI did here. Valid Soluções S.A., Brazil's largest payment card manufacturer, has seen its payments revenue stay flat since the country's instant payment system Pix scaled up.

● Manipal's revenue over the last ten years shows how lumpy this business is. Standalone revenue fell from ₹426 cr in FY17 to ₹240 cr in FY22, and the two good years within that run came off events rather than demand: the RuPay issuance wave after demonetisation, and the RBI deadline of December 2018 for replacing magstripe cards with chip. Revenue then jumped to ₹746 cr in FY23 and ₹1,029 cr in FY24 as issuance deferred through the COVID years came back at once and credit card additions ran at their fastest ever. This is a mandate-driven replacement business, where growth has tended to arrive when a regulator, a scheme or a disruption forces a reissuance cycle.

● Manipal's EBITDA margin ran between 7.0% and 12.5% through FY17 to FY22 and now stands at 32.1%. Between FY22 and FY24, revenue went from ₹240 cr to ₹1,248 cr and margin reached 26.9%, largely on operating leverage as employee and operating costs were spread over a much larger base. Since FY24 the gain has come from raw material cost falling from 47.7% of revenue to 34.5%, helped by metal card production going from 10,000 units to 520,000, and by chip and paper prices easing after the shortage years, which is why Seshaasai's gross margin rose over the same period too.

● Capex needs here are limited, at ₹11.8 cr in FY24, ₹66.0 cr in FY25 and ₹81.4 cr in FY26, or 0.9%, 5.3% and 6.1% of revenue. The business generated cumulative CFO of ₹801 cr over these three years against post-tax EBITDA of ₹930 cr, a conversion of 86%. That cash went into two places. ₹415 cr went on acquisitions, being the cheque and secure logistics division bought from the promoter for ₹55.0 cr in FY24 and the tax stamp, hologram and RFID business bought from the same promoter for ₹360 cr in FY26. The rest went to clearing borrowings, which were ₹449 cr in FY24 and ₹473 cr in FY25 and are now ₹0.42 cr, of which ₹250 cr was repaid in cash and ₹228 cr of debentures converted into equity.

● The ₹805 cr issue is ₹320 cr of fresh capital and ₹485 cr of OFS by parent Manipal Technologies. ₹238 cr of the fresh issue goes to equipment, most items on that list are second-hand and the company currently runs those machines on lease form, part of which it intends to buy. Some of it also goes into cheque printing, where volumes have fallen from 1,187 mn leaves in FY24 to 861 mn in FY26.

● The Manipal Group has been in secured printing for banks since 1948, and Manipal Technologies holds 61.55% of the company pre-offer. Tonse Gautham Pai, born in 1974 and the third generation of the family in the business, holds a B.E. in Printing Technology from Manipal Institute of Technology, joined the group in 1997 and took over group operations in 2004. He sits on this board as a non-executive director and draws no pay from the company, while remaining executive chairman of Manipal Technologies. Running the company is Girish Kini, who joined the group on the shop floor in 1997, became CEO in September 2023 and Executive Director in June 2025, and was paid ₹1.58 cr in FY26. He also holds vested ESOPs equal to 0.33% of pre-offer capital on a fully diluted basis.

● The institutional investors came in through secondary sales by promoter entities. Mukul Agrawal and Think Investments PCC bought in May and June 2024 and together hold 5.43% today. The 2025 round brought in four Nuvama Crossover funds with 6.08% between April and June, Amicus Capital Partners India Fund II with 2.28%, and India SME Investments Fund II raising its stake from 1.37% to 2.26%. Touchstone Trust Scheme IV is the exception, having put ₹200 cr of primary money in as debentures in March 2024 which converted into equity in May 2025, and it now holds 6.61%. None of them is selling in this offer.

● MVP Group International, a US entity in the promoter group, defaulted on facilities from Bank of Baroda's New York branch. The bank invoked Tonse Gautham Pai's personal guarantee for USD 77.5 mn, started insolvency proceedings against him at NCLT Bengaluru, and debited USD 22.2 mn from Primacy Industries, MVP's Indian parent and also a promoter group company. Pai obtained an interim stay on the insolvency case in July 2024 and the bank has applied to have it lifted, so the matter remains open. Separately, Bank of Baroda disqualified Manipal Technologies from one of its tenders because its promoter was a defaulter, and the Karnataka High Court upheld that in July 2026.

● Manipal Technologies is the third largest customer at ₹111 cr or 8.34% of FY26 revenue, is a supplier at 3.38% of purchases, leases the main Manipal plant to the company through group entity Manipal Media Network, and receives a brand royalty of 1.75% of net turnover capped at ₹40.0 cr on trademarks legally owned by Zeta Infotech, terminable at 120 days' notice.

Business

● The core product is the payment card, made at a single plant in Manipal, Karnataka with an installed capacity of 118.30 mn plastic cards and 0.67 mn metal cards a year. The company prints and laminates the sheet, punches the card blank, embeds the chip and attaches the antenna for contactless. Base cards are then moved to 14 personalisation bureaus placed near the issuing bank, where the bank's encrypted customer data is decrypted, encoded onto the chip and magstripe, and the name and number embossed or laser engraved, after which the data is purged. The finished card is kitted into a tamper-evident envelope and dispatched through an in-house logistics platform reaching over 19,000 PIN codes.

● Cards come in debit, credit, prepaid, transit and metal formats, on magstripe, chip and dual interface technology, in PVC, recycled PVC or metal. Higher realisation variants include metal cards in stainless steel and titanium, LED cards, colour core, holographic, braille and image cards. Alongside these sit instant issuance kiosks placed inside bank branches, which let a new customer open an account and walk out with a working card. Over 5,000 are deployed in India, and another 31 are live in Spain dispensing prepaid forex cards.

● Apart from banking cards, the company prints cheque books, statements, insurance policy booklets and welcome kits at five IBA-approved facilities. It makes national identity cards, having billed over 1,000 mn paper-based and over 12 mn PVC cards cumulatively, and polycarbonate driving licences and registration certificates for the Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh transport departments, running five central card processing centres and staffing 88 RTOs with 254 people. The smart tagging business, acquired in April 2025, makes excise tax stamps for state liquor departments at 5,435 mn units in FY26, security holograms used on RuPay cards and voter EPIC cards, VVPAT rolls for EVMs, and RFID tags for supply chain traceability.

● Revenue splits 77.53% domestic non-government, 15.26% domestic government and 7.21% export in FY26. Government share has halved from 25.32% in FY24, while exports have grown from 1.41% over the same period, with 10.42 mn cards exported in FY26 against 2.25 mn in FY24 across more than 15 countries. Named customers include SBI, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Indian Bank, Central Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Airtel Payments Bank, Scapia and Revolut.

● Key raw materials are chip modules, PVC and overlay sheets, antenna inlays, metal sheets, holograms, UV inks, CTS watermarked MICR paper and adhesives. Chip modules are deliberately sourced from multiple global manufacturers to avoid single-vendor dependence. Imports were 49.56% of total purchases in FY26 and material cost was 34.49% of revenue. The top 10 suppliers accounted for 56.05% of purchases, the largest being Techshresta Solutions, a related party, at 9.67%.

● FY26 capacity utilisation was 69.05% on plastic cards, 77.24% on metal cards and 67.78% on tax stamps, against 36.73% on secure solutions offset printing and 32.19% on cheque leaf printing, the last two having fallen for three consecutive years. The company operates 10 facilities across India with 1,809 permanent and 1,509 contract employees.

● The company has four overseas subsidiaries, in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, the United States and the UAE, of which only Nigeria has revenue and both it and the UK entity are loss-making. There are no joint ventures or associates. Its only acquisitions in the last ten years are two slump sales from promoter Manipal Technologies: the Variable Data Printing division covering cheques, statements and secure logistics for ₹55.0 cr effective March 2024, and the revenue assurance business covering tax stamps, holograms and RFID for ₹360 cr effective April 2025.

Promoters and Leadership

● There are seven promoters, but the entire 61.55% pre-offer stake sits in one entity, Manipal Technologies Limited. The three individual promoters, Tonse Gautham Pai, his father T. Satish U. Pai and his mother Sandhya S. Pai, hold no shares in the company directly. Control runs through Tridevita Family Trust-2017, which holds 71.46% of Manipal Technologies and is trusteed by Sandhya S. Pai.

● Tonse Gautham Pai, 51, is the third generation of the family in the business. He holds a B.E. in Printing Technology from Manipal Institute of Technology, joined the group in 1997 and took over group operations in 2004. He is a non-executive director here and draws no remuneration from the company, while serving as executive chairman of Manipal Technologies.

● The company is professionally run. Girish Kini, 52, is the only executive director on a board of eight. He joined the Manipal Group on the shop floor in 1997 after a mechanical engineering degree from Manipal Institute of Technology, became CEO in September 2023 and Executive Director in June 2025, and was paid ₹1.58 cr in FY26.

Financials