India Fintechs Target Credit Market After UPI Payments Boom

According to CNBC, fintech companies in India are shifting focus to the country’s underserved credit market after helping drive adoption of digital payments, with industry leaders saying a credit-product rollout through the Unified Payments Interface will be the next major wave of digital transformation. Sameer Nigam, founder and chief executive of Walmart-owned PhonePe, said the credit market offers opportunities more than double the size of the payments market, while BharatPe launched BharatPe Flex, a product that offers users a pre-approved credit line of up to 60,000 rupees for UPI payments across online and offline merchant transactions. In the financial year ended in March, UPI transactions reached 314 trillion rupees ($3.2 trillion), with PhonePe and Google Pay accounting for more than 70% of transactions, according to the National Payments Corporation of India. Paytm was the third-largest UPI transaction platform, while Meta's WhatsApp Pay ranked eighth and Amazon Pay 12th in July data. Amazon Pay chief executive Vikas Bansal said digital credit is a major fintech opportunity and said the company plans to expand friction-free consumer credit across its ecosystem.