Indian digital payments major Paytm has acquired a stake in Mumbai-based CreditMate, which is into the lending space focused on enabling its dealer partners to seamlessly assess, approve, process and distribute two wheeler loans to customers with no formal credit history.
Paytm has said in a statement that as a part of this investment, it will leverage CreditMate’s proprietary credit and asset valuation technology to create a loan management system in collaboration with its lending partner for customers.
“We intend to change the course of the Indian financial ecosystem by enabling hundreds of millions of deserving consumers to avail long-term credit based on a proprietary loan management system that will cover small scale entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals. We believe that CreditMate will be a valuable and long-term partner towards our efforts of catering to the unorganized sector to bring inclusive financial services for the masses,” Madhur Deora, SVP and CFO of Paytm said.
Founded in 2016 by Ashish Doshi, Jonathan Bill, and Aditya Singh, CreditMate is run by Urja Money Private Limited and provides services to various banking and financial services companies as well as Non-banking Financial Companies (NBFC). It has developed technology to evaluate a customer’s credit worthiness using data collected through the loan application and other credit verification documents that the customer provides.
According to CreditMate’s website, lending partners provide loans for used or new two-wheelers or to get a loan against an owned two-wheeler.
About 65% of Creditmate customers are already Paytm users, and this, Paytm says, gives it a unique opportunity to expand availability of credit in the country. Over time, it will use Creditmate’s platforms to make credit available both offline and online to its users.
The FinTech startup has also raised seed funding to the tune of $500,000 (Rs 3.3 crore) from India Quotient.