UPI will do to credit what we did to debit a few years back: BharatPe's Suhail Sameer

Fintech platform BharatPe's former chief executive officer Suhail Sameer, who had a fall out with co-founder Ashneer Grover, said that BharatPe will continue to bet on credit and lending through its buy now pay later (BNPL) platform PostPe. He was speaking at the Sharrp Summit 2023 in Mumbai.

Sameer said that BharatPe is now India's second-largest company at least from the merchant's side. "A lot of people had written us off when we started. All these are consumer businesses at the core of it, this is what we knew. Merchants accepting UPI was very small. The core thought was if we make UPI free for merchants, it will grow. There was absolute clarity we'll never make money on payments. It has to be made on credit," Sameer, who is now the strategic advisor at BharatPe, said.

He added that going for credit is what they got right. "And then we got lucky. COVID made digital payments mainstream. It gave us the most touch-less payment method. We roughly do two crore translation a day but to put it into perspective, we make zero money on it. We make money on giving credit to retailers," he added.

He said that today BharatPe lends roughly $400-450 million to merchants. 

"The next wave of UPI is credit. UPI is going to do to credit what we did to debit a few years back. Allowing brands to capture consumers has not happened. Brands spend disproportionate money on Facebook ads, for example. There are 30 crore UPI users, and they are all do it between Phonepe, Gpay, BharatPe, Paytm, etc. They open our app at least once a month. We need to think about how we can partner with payment companies to partner with the consumer," he said. "Payment companies are becoming both merchants and consumers. When you play both sides commerce, it's an increasing value add. Lot of innovation will happen on how we can help brands in acquiring new customers," he added.

Sameer said that he's a big believer that payments should be free. "UPI didn't work for a long time for merchants because they said I'll charge you Rs 1 and give your money two days later. The shopkeeper will say what's wrong with cash," he noted.

He added that by trying to make one per cent somewhere in the middle, companies are losing the larger purpose which is to build a cashless economy. 

"UPI will overtake credit card. There are 5 crore credit cards in India because the shopkeepers don't want to take it. You can create incentive for users to get discounts, enable a small shopkeeper to retain a customer. Can it drive discounts to users it wants to drive discount to? Like a new and a high affinity user. With everyone becoming merchant as well as consumer, this is the time when new use cases will emerge," he said.

In October 2021, the fintech company announced its entry into the BNPL category with PostPe. The platform provides credit to customers to buy now, pay later from anywhere.

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