Chennai, NFAPost: Merchant payment network BharatPe has recorded disbursal of over Rs 80 crore in September 2020, making it the largest fintech lender for merchants in India during the pandemic.
The company has facilitated loan disbursals to the tune of Rs 150 crore through its partners in the current quarter. BharatPe also announced that it has ambitious plans of increasing the number of loan disbursals by 7x this year and would disburse loans worth Rs 1,000 crore in the rest of the FY21.
At a time when collateral-free business loans are difficult to avail from other financial institutions, BharatPe’s success in lending has been fuelled by its sachet-sized daily repayment mechanism that it enables through its UPI QR codes. Existing merchants can avail collateral-free loans of up to Rs 7 lakh at low interest rates and with minimal paperwork.
Additionally, the company’s newly launched BharatLoan product has received an unprecedented response from the merchant community. This new lending product allows creditworthy merchants to avail loans via a 100% digital and automated process. With BharatLoan, the merchant also has the option to go for a hybrid repayment model
with a combination of daily QR/POS collection and weekly payments made directly from the bank account.
BharatPe Chief Revenue Officer Nishit Sharma said, “Small and medium-sized retail businesses are bouncing back and prepping for the festive season ahead. BharatPe is leading from the front and helping the merchant community with much needed access to credit.”
“Our proprietary algorithm designed to assess merchant creditworthiness, combined with a multi-modal collection mechanism, is the backbone of our lending product. BharatPe intends to be the fintech partner of choice for Indian merchants and will continue to
launch new products that enable them to grow their businesses,” he added.
BharatLoan allows merchants to avail loans in the range of Rs 20,000 to Rs 7 lakh for up to 15 months tenure, at competitive interest rates. The merchants can repay the loan in the form of small daily or weekly installments. The company’s lending products have an end-to-end digital processing –from applying to uploading documents to loan confirmation.
Merchants can apply for loans on the BharatPe app without risking venturing out.
BharatPe was co-founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018 with the vision to make financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants. BharatPe launched India’s first UPI interoperable QR code, first ZERO MDR payment acceptance service, and first UPI payment backed merchant cash advance service.
In 2020, post-Covid, BharatPe also launched India’s only ZERO MDR card acceptance terminals – BharatSwipe. Currently serving over 50 lakh merchants across 35 cities, the company has grown business 30x in 2019 and is a leader in UPI offline transactions, having processed over 5 crore UPI transactions a month (annualised TPV of $4 billion).
The company has already facilitated disbursement of over Rs 400 crore to its merchants since launch. BharatPe has raised $142.5 million till date. The company’s list of marquee investors includes Beenext, Sequoia, SteadView Capital, Ribbit Capital, Coatue Management LLC, Insight Partners and Amplo.
