Fintech ZestMoney eyes 8,000 e-comm merchants by year-end

ZestMoney, a digital consumer-lending fintech, wants to emerge as the ‘go-to’ platform for EMIs in the country, and is eyeing a five-time increase in business volumes this year, said its co-founder and CEO Lizzie Chapman.

The fintech, which has the tagline ‘EMI for everyone’, and been live for three years now, believes that technology can be used to deliver EMI products for the mass markets without taking the credit card route.

ZestMoney is a technology company that connects customers who come through e-commerce platforms to a lender in real-time.

From a level of 800 e-commerce merchants now, ZestMoney wants to expand to 8,000 by the end of this year. “Our aspiration is to be one of the most-loved financial brands. When people think EMI (equated monthly instalments), they should think of ZestMoney. We want to touch the lives of 30 million people over next two-plus years. As on date, about five million have signed up with us,” Chapman told BusinessLine.

As a B2B2C platform, ZestMoney is not a lender, but a technology layer on top of several lenders (banks and NBFCs), and helps the latter to do better underwriting for consumer loans.

Credit card

A digital customer need not have a credit score or credit card to get a consumer loan through ZestMoney. There is no actual cash payout to the consumer, but credit is delivered through e-commerce merchants.

By adding data points and other risk models, it is possible to expand the universe of people who could be handed out credit, she said, pointing out that only 20-30 million people in India have been found eligible by banking institutions to hold a credit card.

“Our whole point is there is no reason to exclude the bulk of the Indian population from credit just because they don’t have a credit score or banks don’t see them as profit centre now. Just having a credit score doesn’t mean you are credit-worthy.

“We think, we can, through technology dramatically increase the number of credit consumers in the country by a combination of better underwriting and better product design,” she said.