CRED adds buy now, pay later and tap to pay offers

CRED is launching a buy now pay later service and a tap to pay feature as the Indian fintech platform expands its offerings to increase engagement and monetization on the platform.

Cred flash, the Bengaluru-headquartered startup in the buy-now-pay-later category, will allow customers to make seamless payments on the app and across over 500 partner merchants, including Swiggy, Zepto and Urban Company, and pay the bill at no cost in 30 days .

The customized credit provided to customers will allow them to pay bills and recharge and other expenses with a single swipe and without having to wait for an OTP authentication code, the startup, which is valued at over $6 billion, said. The service, operated by RBI-registered NBFC Parfait Finance and Investments Pvt Limited, will initially roll out to a select group of customers, the startup said.

The BNPL product is the latest in a series of new offerings from CRED in recent years as it moves to make its eponymous fintech app a bigger part of its customers’ lives.

The startup, which also offers its customers the ability to lend to each other on the platform at “inflation-beating” rates, last year launched Scan and Pay, its fast UPI QR payments that let customers earn rewards for every transaction they made to merchants and also protect their identity by using aliases.

CRED, which has amassed 16 million users, started life as a tool for tracking and paying credit card bills. It serves some of India’s most trusted customers, as the app only onboards those with at least 750 credit scores. This threshold has made CRED a more viable testing ground for additional financial services, even though these offerings have existed on other platforms for years.

A handful of startups in India offer buy-now-pay-later services, but many of the prominent names in the category, including Zip-backed ZestMoney, are struggling financially as they largely cater to an audience base with thin credit bureau histories.

CRED said it is also rolling out a tap to pay feature that will allow users to make payments with their credit cards using their phones with a tap on the terminal machine. The feature, which will first be rolled out to NFC-enabled Android smartphones, will require members to unlock their phone before tapping the merchant’s PoS machine.

“Tap to pay meets CRED members’ need for a fast, easy and secure offline payment experience. Tap to Pay uses secure card tokenization technology to store card tokens on the device.” said the startup.

The startup, backed by Sequoia India, QED, Tiger Global and Ribbit, is aggressively focusing on growing its revenue as it fires up multiple revenue generation engines, founder and CEO Kunal Shah said earlier this year in an interaction. “Members are engaged in multiple products. And the monetization kind of puts us in the right direction,” he said.