Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Online payments company PayU on Tuesday launched multiple solutions to ease credit and cash flow related challenges faced by small businesses. The three new products Marketplace Early settlement, Priority Settlement, and Merchant Lending will provide working capital, better cash flow management and enhanced liquidity for its 3.5 lakh SME merchants. The credit amount ranges from Rs 25,000 to several crores with repayment cycles from 1 week to 1 year. The credit will be offered based on merchant’s transaction history. 

“SMBs are growth drivers for the country, accounting for a third of India’s GDP. However, access to credit continues to be a major infrastructural hurdle for them. Drawing on our payments expertise & deep understanding of Indian SMBs, we offer diverse credit products for merchants of differing sizes, categories & business life cycles, supporting digital financial inclusion. This segment will be an important focus area for us in 2022,” said Hemang Dattani, Head, Growth Businesses at PayU in a company statement. 

The company said its Priority Settlement feature allows merchants to choose between receiving funds in scheduled settlement cycles every 15 minutes, hourly or in three daily batches. Also, it allows merchants to access funds in less than 30 minutes from the time a transaction is made. “It helps businesses such as travel and cab aggregators, financial services, and inventory-led merchants to provide funds and payments to vendors and customers on the same day, without delay,” the company said.

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PayU provides payment gateway solutions to online businesses and claims to be the preferred payments partner for nearly 60 per cent of the e-commerce merchants, including all leading e-commerce companies and a majority of airline businesses. Its alternate lending platform LazyPay launched in 2017 that offers credit solutions such as Buy Now Pay Later, App-based personal loans and point-of-sale (PoS) credit. The service is live on more than 100 merchants including Byju’s, Swiggy, Flipkart, Makemytrip, Dunzo, Vodafone, Zomato, Bookmyshow, Oyo, etc. 

PayU India’s total payment volume (TPV) grew 70 per cent to $18.9 billion and revenues increased 55 per cent to $133 million during the first half (April-September) of FY22, its parent company Prosus had said in a statement in November 2021. PayU had announced the acquisition of BillDesk in India for $4.7 billion in August last year.