Cred starts peer-to-peer UPI transactions

Founded by serial entrepreneur Kunal Shah, Cred has rapidly expanded into payments, lending, investment, and commerce, it remains to be seen how it will effectively cross-sell, upsell and monetise each of these engines

Fintech unicorn Cred, which was started as a credit card payments platform in 2018, has started facilitating peer-to-peer unified payments interface (UPI) transactions, the company said on April 17.

“The new payment experience has been introduced after the launch of Scan & Pay, which allows members to ‘pay everywhere’ through UPI. Members now have multiple payment options available to them on CRED-  from offline payments (UPI P2P, Scan & Pay, Tap to Pay), online merchant payments (CRED Pay, CRED flash) and bill payments,” the company said.

The UPI ecosystem is currently dominated by Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay, which account for roughly 85 percent of the market, with Paytm coming in third with around 10 percent.

Sequoia and Tiger Global-backed Cred was valued at around $6.5 billion in its last funding round in June of last year. In FY22, the company's losses increased by 144 percent to Rs 1,279 crore, while revenue increased by 312 percent to Rs 393 crore.

Founded by serial entrepreneur Kunal Shah, Cred has rapidly expanded into payments, lending, investment, and commerce, it remains to be seen how it will effectively cross-sell, upsell and monetise each of these engines.

Shah, in a tweet last year, seemed to suggest that Cred should be perceived as a super app, being built like a web series, where one character is introduced at a time and has a connection with previous characters.

"Many companies that are trying to become super apps from the word go are becoming like a buffet at a rich wedding, where you don't understand 90% of dishes," he had said at the time.