Tag: Kotak Mahindra Bank

India’s free digital payments revolution has upended how money moves — but not how fintechs make it. Now, Flipkart’s fintech arm Super.money is partnering with Kotak811, the digital offering of one of India’s top commercial banks, Kotak Mahindra Bank, to change that, bundling UPI payments, savings, and secured credit into a single account aimed at turning usage into profit.

The partnership aims to issue about 2 million secured credit cards in the next 12 months — roughly 60 percent to first-time borrowers — and 5 million within 2 years. Super.money, which already serves 10 million active users, expects the Kotak alliance to contribute around 10 percent of its revenue next year as it works toward profitability by 2026, chief executive Prakash Sikaria said in an interview.

India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), backed by the Indian government, has made instant bank transfers free and ubiquitous, processing more than 19 billion transactions a month. That success, though, has left little room for fintechs to profit, since regulators, including the Indian finance ministry, do not allow the merchant fees that typically fund rewards and credit programs. Super.money’s bet — using a secured card and savings account to reintroduce incentives — offers a template for building viable business models atop no-fee payment systems.

“We do UPI not to solve the pure payment use case,” Sikaria told TechCrunch. “We do UPI to build an interesting cross-financial services play where we are acquiring and retaining customers with the UPI.”

Launched in June 2024 as Walmart-owned Flipkart’s latest fintech venture after spinning off PhonePe in 2023, Super.money is already generating about $3 million in monthly revenue, with an annualized run rate of roughly $36 million, the executive said.

The fintech app has emerged as one of India’s top five UPI platforms in recent months, processing more than 200 million transactions a month for four straight months through August, per the National Payments Corporation of India, the federal body that manages the system.

Around 80% of Super.money’s revenue comes from personal loans, 10% from credit cards, and the remaining 10% from payment products such as bill payments and recharges. The fintech says it retains roughly 85% of users, with 60–70% of its transactions coming from customers under 30.

Sikaria noted that Super.money’s business model rests on two monetization engines. “The first is the financial-services engine — personal loans, cards, deposits, and similar products — and the second is commerce,” he said. “Our idea is to bring a Klarna-style’ pay-in-three’ model on top of commerce, creating a financial overlay that lets customers buy now and pay later within the Super.money ecosystem.”

The partnership with Kotak Mahindra Bank, India’s fourth-largest lender by market capitalization, gives Super.money access to a large, regulated banking infrastructure. It follows an earlier tie-up with Utkarsh Small Finance Bank to specifically offer secured cards through its platform, marking the fintech’s move into mainstream retail banking.

The collaboration introduces what the companies call a “3 in 1 Super Account,” combining a savings account, UPI payments, and a fixed-deposit-backed secured credit card aimed at expanding credit access for first-time borrowers.

To open a 3-in-1 Super Account, users need to make a fixed deposit of at least ₹1,000 (about $11). The account earns interest on the deposit and offers a cashback on every transaction. It also includes a UPI-on-credit feature — a credit line backed by the deposit that does not require any income proof.

Sikaria told TechCrunch that secured cards were chosen as the anchor product because they fit within India’s zero-fee UPI system while still allowing the rewards and cashbacks that the platform was never designed to support.

“Our focus is to bring in users who have a higher propensity to engage with our products,” he said. “UPI happens to be the core engagement and acquisition hook, but for people who don’t want to engage in financial services or other products that we launched, we do not want to serve them from a UPI or payment perspective.”

The partnership with Kotak Mahindra Bank comes soon after Super.money teamed up with SoftBank-backed Juspay to launch a one-click checkout experience for online merchants, aimed primarily at direct-to-consumer brands.

About 1,000 merchants already use the solution, and Super.money plans to expand that network through partnerships with more D2C players and other companies within the Flipkart group, Sikaria said.

The secured card earns merchant discount revenue on transactions, and that funds the cashback, Sikaria said. “Obviously, there is a standard acquisition fee to the partner bank that we charge to the bank, so that comes as a monetization for us as well,” he added.

Super.money plans to issue about 200,000 secured cards a month under its partnership with Kotak before expanding to other banks, Sikaria said.

So far, Flipkart has invested about $50 million in Super.money to kick off its operations. As the business scales, the fintech plans to raise additional capital — possibly from external investors as well.

“We need more capital for at least a couple of years,” Sikaria said. “Very soon, we’ll start formulating our capital-raise strategy.”

He declined to say whether the next round would come from Flipkart or outside investors but noted that Super.money is receiving inbound interest from “a lot of investors.”

In the meantime, Sikaria said the company is keeping its cash burn low, describing its current monthly burn as a “low single-digit million number” without providing specifics.

He added that Super.money is deliberately focusing on India’s top 10 to 30 million users, rather than competing with mass-market payment players such as Google Pay or PhonePe that target hundreds of millions.

“What we want to do is build a formidable secured card franchise with a profitable P&L — for us, the bank, and our customers as well,” Sikaria said.