Google Pay has partnered with LenDenClub, a peer-2-peer lending platform, within its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) app. Through this integration Google Pay users can apply for loans and make investments, LenDenClub said in a statement on Thursday. LenDenClub currently works with BharatPe on providing similar lending and investment options for the UPI players’ merchants.
The lending platform will offer its ‘InstaMoney’ credit product to Google Pay users, it said, while users can deposit or invest money with the P2P lender and earn interest in return. The InstaMoney module on Google Pay will offer loans between Rs 5,000 to Rs 12,500, while users can deposit a minimum of Rs 500 on the platform as an investment in the LenDenClub module on the app, the company said.
The app integration between the two players has been completed for the Android version of Google Pay, while the iOS version will be launched in a few months, the company said. Users can start accessing credit via InstaMoney as of today, while the investing module will be ready in the next few days, it added.
“Being the first P2P player to integrate with GPay, offers us access to over 60-70 million active GPay users monthly on both the demand and supply side of our business. With more and more people in the country getting used to the idea of shopping and transacting online, a large portion are now also seeking credit digitally. We are confident to add value to Google Pay’s customers through this collaboration,” said Bhavin Patel, co-founder and chief executive officer, LenDenClub.
The company has a loan book of more than Rs 500 crore, at present, and has so far disbursed over Rs 1,000 crore through 150,000 users, who are called investors on the P2P platform. The company has one of the lowest default rates in the digital lending space at 3.4% as on December 31, 2020, it said.
Google Pay’s market share in the UPI space stood at 40% in February 2021, having processed over 827 million transactions worth Rs 1.74 lakh crore. The company Google Pay has teamed up with Axis Bank with a credit card and also has several banking and non-banking lenders as partners. It also has partnered with SBI Cards and Payment Services for a card tokenization facility.
“We just enable the ability to apply the loan, we do not underwrite these loans. The strategy is to see how we can create more economic opportunities for our users, and credit is a critical part of that,” said Ambarish Kenghe, Google Pay’s Vice President of Product in a recent conversation with MediaNama. He explained that the new privacy policy will not affect its lending strategy as they only act as a lead generator for lenders.
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