Home Credit India (HCI), a local arm of the international consumer finance provider, has tied-up with Pine Labs, which is focussed on payments and leading merchant commerce platform, to enhance access to its Ujjwal Card’s digital EMI-financing options to millions of HCI customers at Pine Labs PoS terminals pan-India.

Through this partnership, Home Credit India’s lending platform is being integrated to Pine Labs Point of Sales (PoS) on a pan-India basis so as provide an omni channel connection for its offerings.

This will increase the number of outlets that HCI customers can transact, increase acceptability of Home Credit’s Ujjwal EMI card and also increases customer acquisition potential for HCI through Pine Labs, Ankush Khosla, Chief Sales Officer, Home Credit India, told BusinessLine.

HCI, which has a consumer base of more than 1 crore since entering the Indian market in 2012, sees this partnership giving fillip to its customer loyalty, as its customers will get a new avenue or large PoS network to avail Home Credit’s paperless EMI financing. This will also help in expanding HCI’s customer base with new customer acquisition.

As part of HCI’s bouquet of digital loan products introduced in the last two years, the digital Ujjwal EMI Card, offering instant pre-set credit limit to customers was launched in late 2020.

The paperless, no-cost EMI options are fast-emerging as an enticing selling proposition for merchants who can, in just a few taps of Pine Labs’ smart Android PoS terminal, convert a regular purchase into 3, 6, 9, 12 months EMI options at no additional cost.

Home Credit is prevalent in over 579 cities in India with 50-60 per cent of its business coming from outside of the metro cities. “Home Credit is more dominant in the north and west. We expect to increase our footprint in south and east and address pan-India population,” Khosla said.

In the first phase, Ujjwal EMI offering will be available at 18,000 stores with an introductory offer of flat 5 per cent cashback on purchase of mobiles, consumer electronics and home appliances.

“Our joint offering will bring more customers under the growing Buy Now Pay Later category and help merchants drive sales through easy to avail and quick EMI offers during checkout,” said Mayur Mulani – Business Leader – Pay Later, Pine Labs.

Pine Labs has more than two lakh merchants transacting with it under various categories from lifestyle to electronics to furniture. The company, which had historically partnered with banks and credit card companies, had started to partner with couple of NBFCs.

“Home Credit is differently positioned in the way they give credit to a new to credit customer or customer who does not have a card or not underwritten. The analytical skills they bring to the table to underwrite a customer on the fly is something we have been looking for,” Mulani said.

The endeavour jointly is to give a completely paper less digital loan to a customer, he added.

Even for shoppers who are new to Home Credit, merchants will facilitate a quick digital onboarding journey of less than five minutes. “We have always believed in delivering trusted financial products & services, responsibly and in today’s post-Covid digital world, this partnership reiterates our commitment to customers for an omnichannel connection with our products & services and meet customer needs by growing our partner network,” Khosla said.

With the Covid-led disruptions, Home Credit has embraced digital transformation well, by digitising all the offering and services end-to-end, as both HCI and Pine Labs customers and merchants/retail partners can do seamless onboarding at the point of sale or anywhere via app or website.

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