* Clocks 2 lac members in just 6 months of launch of BharatPe Club, its premium membership program
* Company targets 1 million members by June 2022
BharatPe, India's fastest growing fintech company, today announced that it has received an overwhelming response to BharatPe Club, India’s first ‘merchant only’ loyalty program. Launched earlier this year, BharatPe Club already has a member base of 2 lac offline merchants and kirana store owners across tier-1, 2 and 3 cities and towns. The company is bullish about BharatPe Club and is targeting building a member base of 1 million merchants by June 2022.
BharatPe Club offers a host of benefits to its members, including 0% Loan Processing Fees on business loans, flat ?1,000 off on BharatSwipe, 20% discount on bill payments, cashback on BharatPe Card, and priority customer service. Additionally, they can take home exclusive merchandise signed by BharatPe brand ambassadors. BharatPe’s merchant partners can become a member of BharatPe Club by paying ?1,000 as an annual enrolment fee, and can enjoy benefits of upto ?20,000.
BharatPe Club has witnessed huge success among offline merchants across categories including Grocery, Food and Beverage, Retail, Electronics, Dairy/Fresh Products, Services, Medical/Healthcare, Automobiles, Wholesale/Distribution, Beauty and Wellness. The top cities for BharatPe Club include Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru, Delhi, Warangal, Visakhapatnam, Karimnagar, Vijaywada, Chennai, Mumbai, Indore, Guntur and Chittoor. Interestingly, BharatPe Club has seen a huge organic uptake with most of the merchants opting for BharatPe Club, without any marketing push. The top products preferred by the BharatPe Club members include BharatPe account (used by 88% of Club members), business loans (availed by 26% of members) and BharatSwipe machines (opted by 26% of members).
Speaking on the development, Mr. Suhail Sameer, Chief Executive Officer, BharatPe, said, “As we grow, it becomes important for us to build an engaged merchant base and also ensure that we offer a host of additional benefits to our loyal merchant partners. We recently announced that we will be launching world’s first ‘Merchant Shareholding Program (MSP)’ with the objective of providing an opportunity to our merchant partners to become part equity owners of BharatPe. As a part of the program, we will be creating an equity pool structure worth upto US$100 mn to be allotted to eligible merchants over the course of the next 4 years. BharatPe Club was launched with the objective of empowering our merchant partners and rewarding our loyal merchants with additional benefits and cashbacks. Over the last 6 months, we have seen great acceptability for this product amongst merchants across businesses and locations. BharatPe Club has also contributed immensely to our business growth as it has helped us build trust and in turn, enabled merchants to explore additional products from our portfolio of offerings. We have been able to build a 2 lac member strong BharatPe Club and are aiming to cross the 1 million mark by June 2022. With BharatPe Club, we intend to offer a wide range of services to all our merchants, strengthening their bond with the brand.”
BharatPe is a merchant first company and has been launching Fintech products that can help offline merchants grow their business. The company has grown exponentially over the last 18 months, clocking multi-fold growth in digital payments, lending as well as POS business. The company has been aggressively expanding across cities and is currently present in 140+ cities. Its business loans are available in 11,000 pin codes across 24 states in India. BharatPe had crossed US$13 bn in annualized payment number last month and plans to ramp it up to US$ 30 bn by March 23. Also, it has set a target of building a loan book of US$ 5 bn in the next 5 years to address the unmet credit gap amongst millions of SMEs in India.
About BharatPe
BharatPe was co-founded by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani in 2018 with the vision of making financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants. In 2018, BharatPe launched India’s first UPI interoperable QR code, the first zero MDR payment acceptance service. In 2020, post-Covid, BharatPe also launched India’s only zero MDR card acceptance terminals – BharatSwipe. Currently serving over 75 lakh merchants across 140+ cities, the company is a leader in UPI offline transactions, processing 11 crores+ UPI transactions per month (annualized Transaction Processed Value of US$ 11+ Bn). The company has already facilitated disbursement of loans totaling to over ?2,800 crores to over 300,000 merchants, since launch. BharatPe’s POS business processes payments of over ?1,400 crores/ month. BharatPe has raised over US$ 650 million in equity and debt, till date. The company’s list of marquee investors includes Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadfast Capital, Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext, Amplo and Sequoia Capital. In June 2021, the company announced the acquisition of PAYBACK India, the country’s largest multi-brand loyalty program company with 100 million+ members. In June 2021, it was also given an in-principle approval by Reserve Bank of India to establish a Small Finance Bank, in partnership with Centrum Financial Services Limited (Centrum), the established and profitable NBFC arm of the Centrum Group. In August 2021, BharatPe forayed into the consumer space with the launch of its first-of-its-kind consumer investment+ lending product- 12% Club. In October 2021, the consortium of Centrum Financial Services Limited (Centrum) and BharatPe, was issued a Small Finance Bank (SFB) license by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). BharatPe also made its grand entry in the Buy Now Pay Later segment with the launch of postpe in October.
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