Digital payments player Freecharge is set to launch a slew of products this year as it looks to offer a set of comprehensive financial products. On the anvil, is a neo banking platform as well as lending services for small and medium enterprises.
“Our focus has been to provide a full suite of financial services, including payments, lending and savings. We have been working on it for the last two years and they will be launched during the course of this year,” said Siddharth Mehta, CEO, Freecharge.
Apart from payments, the company is already offers financial services such as mutual funds, credit cards, insurance and e-gold on its platform. It has recently also launched PayLater for its customers.
Partnership with Axis Bank
In an interaction with BusinessLine , Mehta said the neo bank, which is in partnership with Axis Bank, will offer services including a full KYC savings account, fixed deposits, recurring deposits and loans.
It will also offer services like a financial health score and goal management platform. “Our target customer base are salaried professionals in the 22- 32 year category,” he said.
Separately, Freecharge will also offer small ticket loans to merchants ranging from ₹5,000 to ₹1 lakh. The PayLater facility will also expand to EMIs, he said.
Meanwhile, commenting on the payments landscape, Mehta said that digital payments saw a sharp uptick post the Covid-19 pandemic. “There were pockets when digital payments saw a spike. For instance in the first Covid wave, DTH and data recharges increased, and then stabilised,” he noted.
In the payment space, Freecharge has been focussing more on increasing the number of transactions per user.
Mehta said the average number of transactions per user has now increased to about three per month from 2 to 2.5 previously.