Flipkart fintech super.money preps buy-now-pay-later play

The company wants to compete with existing cash finance players such as Axio and Snapmint at the intersection of tight contests between e-commerce and lending, said the first person, who asked not to be named because the product is still in development.

“Once fully built, the launch will have two parts,” this person added. “One is to offer super.money as a payment option on e-commerce sites, and the other is to bring an e-commerce layer into the app with BNPL-style financing at checkout.”

The broader idea is to position super.money as a one-stop shop for credit-backed e-commerce journeys, so users can move from discovery to payment in a single, seamless flow across its interface, the second person said.

Mint was unable to independently determine an exact timeline for launch. However, the two people cited above said that the BNPL product is currently in the development and testing phase and is expected to go live only after the company completes the stricter KYC and other regulatory checks applicable to this category.

This emerging category of BNPL being offered as a payment option on merchant sites is not new. Companies such as Snapmint, which raised approximately $125 million this year, and Axio, which Amazon acquired for approximately $200 million, are already major players in this space.

According to Brijesh Damodaran, managing partner at Auxano Capital, a BNPL offering goes beyond being just another payment button at the checkout of a UPI app, giving it greater control over the merchant interface with features like EMI options, quotes and seamless later payment flows.

“UPI has won in terms of volume, but not in terms of margin. But it carries zero MDR (merchant discount rate) and is highly commoditized. BNPL or payment credit allows a UPI app to move from pure payments to credit-driven revenue through interest, fees or merchant commission,” he said. MDR is the fee merchants pay payment processors for accepting digital payments; UPI transactions have a zero MDR regime since 2020; This means payment apps do not directly generate revenue from streams.

In the broader consumer credit landscape, BNPL is expected to grow strongly at 20-35% annually over the next few years, but the real question is whether big banks, traditional card issuers or UPI-first players like super.money will control most of the market at checkout, Damodaran added.

business basics

A spokesperson for Super.money declined to comment on the new BNPL plans. But founder Prakash Sikaria told Mint that the app processes transactions “approximately.” ₹740 billion loans were granted last month alone through various loan products.

Apart from loans, Super.money also works with a cluster of banks, including Axis Bank (for co-branded credit card and secured cards), Utkarsh Small Finance Bank (for secured credit cards and fixed deposits) and Kotak811 (secured cards and integrated savings-spending-borrowing account).

“Our forecast next year is 2 million cards. We are among the top three issuers of RuPay cards and we want to be the largest,” said Sikaria.

Flipkart launched the super.money beta in June 2024 and went public in August the same year. Since then, the app has doubled down on young, often first-time borrowers as its main market.

To acquire these users, super.money relied on a rewards-focused model that offers up to 5% cashback on every UPI transaction. The strategy seems to have paid off: as of September 2025, the app has climbed to the top among UPI players in terms of transaction volume, surpassing established names such as CRED, Amazon Pay, WhatsApp Pay and BHIM.

In September, super.money processed 256.34 million UPI transactions worth ₹9,852.44 crore even as PhonePe and Google Pay continued to dominate 80-83% of the overall market, up from around 85% in the previous year.

As for whether this type of cash-intensive purchasing is sustainable, Sikaria said the average annual cash back per user is roughly $2-$3. “Our thesis is that we need to make $2-$3 more per user than our competitors,” he said. “There is a wide range of users in India; generally monetizable users subsidize non-monetizable users. If you can largely avoid non-monetizable users and focus on the high Arpu (average revenue per user) segment, your average Arpu will be much higher.”

Giving detailed information about secured loan products, Sikaria said that super.money’s average monthly expenses are approx. ₹5,000-6,000 per secured card user, largely due to merchant payments.

The app currently has approximately 10.0-10.5 million monthly transacting users. On the revenue side, Sikaria said super.money generates around $3 million a month, which currently equates to an annual revenue rate of around $36 million.

Flipkart’s renewed fintech bet with super.money marks its second foray into payments and lending after its PhonePe division. The e-commerce giant acquired PhonePe in 2016, but the two split ownership in December 2022, paving the way for both raising capital and scaling on their own, with Walmart continuing as joint majority shareholder.

Since then, Sameer Nigam-led PhonePe has filed draft papers with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for an initial public offering of around $1 million. ₹11,000 crore and saw massive secondary share sales; this includes General Atlantic’s $600 million settlement to help employees cover tax expenses from exercised stock options.

regulatory lens

The BNPL segment has faced scrutiny from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in recent years, particularly for low-cost collateral-free loans, deferred payment products routed through prepaid instruments, and opaque pricing for borrowers. The RBI has tightened digital lending norms and forced lenders to hold more capital against unsecured retail portfolios.

In 2023, the RBI also tightened the rules on first loss default guarantees (FLDGs), a popular comfort structure used by fintechs with NBFC partners, where the fintech promises to cover part of the lender’s loan losses.

The central bank capped such guarantees at 5% of the outstanding loan pool after previous market practices in some unsecured digital lending segments were reportedly much higher. This has pushed many loan service providers to pause or redesign short-term, small-cost loan products as NBFC partners realign risk, capital and economics under the new cap.

BNPL view

The UPI and BNPL market is flooded with competitors like Navi (founded by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal), MobiKwik, Paytm, Amazon Pay and Google Pay. Specifically on BNPL, super.money’s planned products will sit alongside Snapmint and Axio, as well as fixed “pay later” offerings such as Amazon Pay Later and Flipkart Pay Later, as well as horizontal BNPL specialists such as Simpl and LazyPay (owned by PayU).

The BNPL industry in India has witnessed turbulence in the last few years, especially after high-profile disruptions such as the closure of ZestMoney. ZestMoney, once the poster child for digital lending, ceased operations in December 2023 due to rising non-performing assets and regulatory pressures, before part of its loan book and technology platform was sold to NBFC lender DMI Finance.

Layoffs and restructuring followed, and similar pressures hit competitors. Simpl, another leading payment lender, reportedly cut its workforce in October this year and faces regulatory pressure, including enforcement actions from the Enforcement Directorate this year.