The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) feature will allow Cred members to make payments directly through their bank accounts.
The feature can also be used to make peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, either by scanning a quick response (QR) code or by feeding in the beneficiary’s UPI identity.
To drive success of UPI payments on the platform, Cred is betting on privacy, design and rewards.
The payment feature pushes customers to create a UPI alias to avoid phone numbers being used in the virtual payment address of the UPI id.
Further, to reduce anxiety around stuck payments, Cred has also introduced payment protection.
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This will help a user get the amount back when a payment has been debited but has not reached the recipient and is later deemed successful.
The company is also using rewards to increase the usage of its payments service.
Users can get cashbacks at select merchants or Cred points that can be utilised in the real world.
Users can also personalize their scanner screen by adding elements.
Cred’s entry into UPI payments comes at a time when the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs the UPI infrastructure, is talking to the government as well as industry stakeholders on the implications of delaying its implementation timeline for limiting the market share of players, ET
had reported on September 20.
Market leaders PhonePe and Google Pay have either written or had consultations with the NPCI to delay the January 2023 deadline – for implementing the market cap – by almost three years.
Both PhonePe and Google Pay clocked 48% and 34% market share in UPI payments, respectively, in August. PhonePe and Google Pay, on average, have about 80% share on the digital payments network each month.
NPCI had set a limit of 30% market share for any digital payments entity on a rolling basis since last year.
Players had to meet NPCI’s requirements within two years of initiation of the market cap.
ET also reported earlier citing sources that both Swiggy and Zomato were thinking of making an entry into the UPI digital payments platform as third-party payments apps.
Launched in 2018, Cred helps users pay credit card bills easily and earn rewards.
It has since expanded to lending through Cred ‘Cash’ and enabled online commerce and brand discovery through its ‘Store’ and ‘Commerce’ platforms.
It diversified into Cred Pay, which allowusers to make payments at online merchants through Cred coins.
In June, the
company raised Rs 617 crore (or $80 million) in the first tranche of its latest funding round led by GIC of Singapore.
Existing investors including Sofina, Tiger Global, Falcon Edge, and Dragoneer also participated in the round.
The company told ET that it was raising $140 million in a mix of primary and secondary deals, valuing it at around $6.4 billion.
Earlier this month, Cred said it would invest $10 million to acquire a minority stake in LiquiLoans, valuing the P2P non-banking financial company at $200 million.
Currently, Cred partners with Liquiloans to enable P2P lending for users under its Cred Mint product line.
