Google Pay enables online loans for small businesses, partners with digital lending app FlexiLoans

Google had earlier this yr introduced that it’s going to make investments $15 million to assist SMEs in India.

Credit score and Finance for MSMEs: Google’s cost app for small companies, others — Google Pay for Enterprise has now enabled small retailers to entry credit score via its tie-up with the digital lending platform for MSMEs FlexiLoans. The latter can also be seeking to disburse loans to over 50,000 small companies within the subsequent 12 months with this collaboration. Credit score lending to a majority of MSMEs in a number of sectors has been severely impacted due to the pandemic and following lockdowns. Importantly, credit score deployed by banks to micro and small enterprises (MSEs) throughout April this yr had recorded unfavourable year-on-year development of minus 2.2 per cent for the primary time since Covid struck final yr, the newest information by the Reserve Financial institution of India confirmed. Banks had deployed Rs 10.60 lakh crore in April, down from Rs 10.84 lakh crore in April 2020.

FlexiLoans stated it’s the first lender to go reside on the Google Pay platform. The corporate stated it has disbursed unsecured enterprise loans value greater than Rs 1,000 crore over the past 4 years and has entry to over 5 million MSMEs within the nation. Mortgage functions are largely from Tier III and Tier IV. FlexiLoans has focused annualized disbursal run-rate of over Rs 1,000 crore in a single yr. “The timing (of collaboration) can also be proper given the hardships that this sector has confronted in the course of the pandemic. Google Pay has been on the forefront of service provider funds and we hope to supply each Google Pay service provider a safe and digital borrowing expertise,” stated Abhishek Kothari, Co-Founder, FlexiLoans.com.

Subscribe to Financial Express SME newsletter now: Your weekly dose of news, views, and updates from the world of micro, small, and medium enterprises

In response to the World Financial institution estimates, the credit score hole for Indian MSMEs is at $380 billion and the marketplace for digital or on-line lending. The worth of digital lending in India had hit the $75 billion mark in 2018 and by 2023, the digital lending worth is prone to be elevated to round $350 billion, as per Statista. FlexiLoans competes with Lendingkart, Indifi, Ziploan, BharatPe, Razorpay, and so forth.

To be able to ease the credit score crunch amongst Covid-hit MSMEs, the federal government had final week enhanced the corpus of the Emergency Credit score Line Assure Scheme (ECLGS) to Rs 4.5 lakh crore from Rs 3 lakh crore earlier below the Rs 20 lakh crore Atmanirbhar Bharat bundle introduced final yr in Might.

Google had earlier this yr introduced that it’s going to make investments $15 million to assist SMEs in India for which it’s in discussions with native companions. The search large had introduced a $200 million funding as a part of its greater than $800 million dedication to assist small companies globally amid Covid. The corporate had additionally launched Develop with Google Small Enterprise Hub final yr to affords digital instruments to small companies for his or her digital adoption “go digital, preserve enterprise continuity and get entry to useful sources like fast assist movies, assist pages to be taught digital talent,” Google had stated final yr.