All is not well with India’s BNPL frenzy

BNPL startups have Indians taking loans for cab rides and dinner parties. With the spotlight now on questionable practices, the RBI is calling them in.

Around 10 officials from the Reserve Bank of India, seated around a boardroom table at the central bank’s Mumbai headquarters, looked on intently as the founder of a five-year old startup made his presentation. 

His firm is a licensed non-banking financial company, or NBFC in Indian banking parlance, with a modest loan book of about Rs 200 crore. More importantly, it’s also a fintech startup with a buy-now-pay-later app that has disbursed loans worth Rs 2,000 crore over the past six months, in partnership with a number of other NBFCs.

And the reason this founder had been summoned by the …

Author

Ashwin Manikandan

Ashwin writes on fintech and banking at The Morning Context. He joins us from The Economic Times, he worked across the finance, tech and startup verticals, breaking stories related to India’s banking system, startups in the new economy, digital payments, insurance and cryptocurrencies.

Writer

ashwin@mailtmc.com

Delhi