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KR Srivats
BharatPe, a leading merchant payment network, aims to disburse ₹1,000 crore in loans to its merchant network in the next six months, said Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe.
In the 12 months since launch of its loan product in September last year, BharatPe has disbursed ₹450 crore in loans to its merchant customers, he said.
This aim of ₹1,000-crore loan disbursements in next six months is doable and not ambitious, given that company already is serving 5 million merchants across 35 cities. In September 2020 alone, the Sequoia, SteadView and other marquee investors’ backed-BharatPe disbursed ₹80 crore in loans.
Going forward, BharatPe, which has raised $ 142.5 million in capital till date, may expand its loan products from current collateral free business loans to even secured lending products, Sameer told BusinessLine. However, BharatPe will only merchants focussed business and has no plans to enter into B2C space, he added.
BharatLoan, the loan product of BharatPe, allows creditworthy merchants to avail loans via a 100 per cent 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 directly from the bank account.
BharatPe had recently launched India’s only zero MDR card acceptance terminals — BharatSwipe.
“Our machines are zero-MDR and zero rental. We have deployed 15,000 machines in two months since launch and located in top five cities. We want to reach 1 lakh PoS machines base by March 2021,” he said.
BharatPe wants to double its merchant customer base to a million by March 2021. In the next five years, this two-year-old company wants to become a small finance bank, he said.
Sameer made it clear that BharatPe does not want to make any money on transactions. “Our business is lending. For me, both QR and PoS is a service that we do to our merchants, which allows me to do lending better. This allows us to do underwriting much better. We don’t want to make any money on transactions. We don’t also make money on QR,” he said.
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