CRED Joins India’s D2C Rush With CRED Pay Feature For Ecommerce Discounts

Taking its first official steps into ecommerce and the D2C segment, Bengaluru-headquartered credit card bill payment app CRED, on Friday (December 11), announced the launch of CRED Pay, which will allow users to use their CRED reward coins across ecommerce sites and unlock discounts.

The company is currently closing deals with more partners, but CRED Pay will be rolled out on BigBasket, Dineout and ixigo to begin with, over the next two months.

The credit card payments app has partnered with Razorpay and Visa to develop the features. Before launching the payment feature, the company ran a pilot project with over 30 merchants including the likes of Vahdam Teams, The Man company,  Epigamia and Man Matters among others. The company claimed that these merchants experienced larger basket sizes and improved customer satisfaction.

CRED’s Pitch To D2C Brands

The latest feature will also enable brands to create a direct-to-consumer (D2C) channel through CRED by offering an instant payment experience and reducing their dependency on other avenues to sell products and services. With D2C channel coming to the fore in the post-pandemic market, brands are looking for all kinds of avenues to reach customers and CRED with its user base comprising credit card users offers a ready market for the D2C brands catering to the aspirational set.

CRED CEO and founder Kunal Shah explained, “CRED Pay enables instant, safe, and secure payments on credit cards, making spends on merchant platforms as delightful and rewarding as paying bills on CRED. By simplifying checkout, CRED Pay will expand the use of credit cards for online payments and enable merchants to offer an instant payment experience on their platforms.”

CRED claims the feature will help increase ecommerce ticket sizes since payments will primarily be through credit cards. “Using CRED coins as an incentive for CRED members also helps brands save up on additional advertising costs that they would otherwise bear on traditional pay per click models. It also helps emerging brands access and engage high-spending CRED members who have a high lifetime value and drive the majority of consumption on most platforms.” the company said in a statement.

Going Beyond Credit Card Payments

Founded in 2018, CRED offers rewards and benefits for paying credit card bills. Members are only allowed once their credit score has been screened, so CRED does have the data to back its lending play. CRED has added over 10 lakh users on the mobile application in the last two years and new products as well.

The app has also launched a Cred Store marketplace where consumers can buy products from Indian and international D2C brands as well as FMCG companies.

It also launched Cred Rent Pay earlier this year, which enables users to pay their monthly rent through credit card. The company recently raised $80 Mn in a round led by existing investors Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global at a post-money valuation of about $800 Mn. The company had raised $120 Mn, back in August 2019, at a post-money valuation of $450 Mn.