India’s largest merchant payment company, BharatPe, declared the expansion plans across tier-1, 2, and 3 cities in the country. The company plans to substantially increase its presence by adding another 30 cities to its present 35+ cities by December 2020. The announcement is in accordance with the company’s commitment to becoming the preferred financial services partner for over 60 million SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) in the country. The decision to double its footprint in the country is in line with this.
The cities, across the country, include tier-1 cities like Chennai and Kolkata, rising cities like Coimbatore, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Kochi, Dehradun as well as tourist hubs like Amritsar, Varanasi, Agra, Allahabad, among others. The payment company aims to add another 3 million vendors to its existing list of over 5 million vendors by the end of FY 21. The company specially selected cities that are either business hubs or emerging commercial centres, for the phase of expansion.
The company recently launched a zero rental, zero fees card acceptance machine (BharatSwipe) in the new cities and will be rolling out its one-of-a-kind interoperable UPI QR with zero transaction fees. With the objective to help the merchants for growing their business, the company would offer attractive collateral-free loans of up to Rs. 7 lakhs at competitive interest rates. The company also offers its hybrid repayment model with a combination of daily QR/ POS collection and weekly payments made directly from the bank account to the vendors getting loans.
Mr. Suhail Sameer, Group President of BharatPe, commented on the expansion that, the pandemic has fuelled exponential growth of the digital payments industry in the country as a large number of customers are opting for cashless payments. He also added that they have seen their business grow manifold over the last few months. The company’s payments vertical has recorded consistent double-digit growth on a month-on-month basis. The company is expecting to disburse loans of Rs.1000 crores by the end of the year as their lending vertical has scaled very well. The payment company aims to enable millions of more businesses in the new cities they are venturing in.
