Indian fintech BharatPe has bought a 51% stake in a local non-banking financial company?Trillion Loans to improve access to credit for its merchant partners

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BharatPe,?which allows Indian merchants to accept UPI and card payments from any app, has bought a controlling 51% stake in a local loan provider Trillion Loans.

Upon the completion of the deal, Trillion Loans will continue to operate as an independent entity. Moreover, the Mumbai-based non-banking financial company (NBFC) is open to cooperation with more fintechs. Future partnerships are expected to help the lender expand its loan portfolio.

At the moment, Trillion Loans provides different secured and unsecured loan products such as working capital loans, auto loans, gold loans, and education loans catered to both SMEs and retail consumers. Besides buying a major stake in the company, BharatPe has also invested a substantial amount of money into Trillion Loans to enable the NBFC to grow its loan business.

Despite remaining an independent company, Trillion Loans will be supervised by BharatPe’s chosen executive board. As part of the deal, BharatPe has appointed a veteran banker?Ravindra Pandey, as well as?Nalin Negi, and Sabyasachi Senapati to the board of Trillion Loans. While Pandey has served as director of the Board at Yes Bank and National Payments Corporation of India, both Negi and Senapati are executives of BharatPe.

BharatPe founder Shashvat Nakrani believes that the acquisition will further propel the Indian fintech unicorn’s growth and accelerate its journey to profitability. The deal facilitates?credit access to the company’s underserved and unbanked merchant partners and customers alike, which goes in line?with the BharatPe Group’s larger purpose and ESG goals.

BharatPe enables universal?point-of-sale transaction capabilities for local merchants with the help of a unified QR code that accepts payments from any app. In addition, the company?offers P2P investment and bank deposit products to its merchant partners. The acquisition makes it even more competitive in the local market where fintech peers like Cred, Uni and LendingKart have all acquired NBFCs to support their credit offering.