Paytm, Fullerton announce partnership to scale up digital lending to MSMEs

Paytm and Fullerton India, a non-banking financial institution, have launched a collaboration to bring digital lending to MSMEs and consumers in smaller cities and villages.

"Fullerton India and One97 Communications Limited, which owns the brand Paytm, India’s leading digital payments and financial services platform, have announced a partnership to provide lending products to merchant partners and consumers. With the partnership, the two established institutions will leverage data-driven insights and wide reach to bring credit to new-to-credit users," Fullerton India said in a statement.

Fintech users will be able to use Paytm Postpaid (buy-now-pay-later) on the Paytm platform as a result of this relationship. In addition, the alliance will provide lending products such as merchant loans. In addition, both organisations have stated that they will expand their product offerings to include fast personal loans. "We have seen great adoption of the lending products among consumers and merchants on our platform. We believe that there is a massive opportunity to provide access to credit to merchants in small cities and towns. We continue to solely focus on helping our blue-chip lending partners, to bring seamless credit products to our customers and merchants. Consumer credit has been growing exponentially through products like Paytm Postpaid and Personal Loans, which we believe can be further expanded through our partnership with Fullerton India," Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, Paytm Lending said.

Fullerton India, which was founded in 2007, is one of the country's largest non-banking financial companies, with over 628 branches across 600 towns and 58,000 villages. Fullerton India Credit Company Limited is owned by Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), which owns a 74.9% share. Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH) is an independently owned strategic and operating investor in financial and associated services in emerging economies, owning a 25.1% ownership in Fullerton India Credit Company Limited.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.