India’s free digital funds revolution has upended how cash strikes — however not how fintechs make it. Now, Flipkart’s fintech arm Tremendous.cash is partnering with Kotak811, the digital providing of one in all India’s prime industrial banks, Kotak Mahindra Financial institution, to vary that, bundling UPI funds, financial savings, and secured credit score right into a single account geared toward turning utilization into revenue.

The partnership goals to situation about 2 million secured bank cards within the subsequent 12 months — roughly 60 p.c to first-time debtors — and 5 million inside 2 years. Tremendous.cash, which already serves 10 million lively customers, expects the Kotak alliance to contribute round 10 p.c of its income subsequent 12 months as it really works towards profitability by 2026, chief govt Prakash Sikaria stated in an interview.

India’s Unified Funds Interface (UPI), backed by the Indian authorities, has made prompt financial institution transfers free and ubiquitous, processing greater than 19 billion transactions a month. That success, although, has left little room for fintechs to revenue, since regulators, together with the Indian finance ministry, don’t enable the service provider charges that sometimes fund rewards and credit score packages. Tremendous.cash’s guess — utilizing a secured card and financial savings account to reintroduce incentives — presents a template for constructing viable enterprise fashions atop no-fee fee methods.

“We do UPI to not resolve the pure fee use case,” Sikaria instructed TechCrunch. “We do UPI to construct an attention-grabbing cross-financial providers play the place we’re buying and retaining clients with the UPI.”

Launched in June 2024 as Walmart-owned Flipkart’s newest fintech enterprise after spinning off PhonePe in late 2022, Tremendous.cash is already producing about $3 million in month-to-month income, with an annualized run price of roughly $36 million, the chief stated.

The fintech app has emerged as one in all India’s prime 5 UPI platforms in current months, processing greater than 200 million transactions a month for 4 straight months by August, per the Nationwide Funds Company of India, the federal physique that manages the system.

Round 80% of Tremendous.cash’s income comes from private loans, 10% from bank cards, and the remaining 10% from fee merchandise reminiscent of invoice funds and recharges. The fintech says it retains roughly 85% of customers, with 60–70% of its transactions coming from clients beneath 30.

Sikaria famous that Tremendous.cash’s enterprise mannequin rests on two monetization engines. “The primary is the financial-services engine — private loans, playing cards, deposits, and related merchandise — and the second is commerce,” he stated. “Our concept is to convey a Klarna-style’ pay-in-three’ mannequin on prime of commerce, making a monetary overlay that lets clients purchase now and pay later inside the Tremendous.cash ecosystem.”

The partnership with Kotak Mahindra Financial institution, India’s fourth-largest lender by market capitalization, offers Tremendous.cash entry to a big, regulated banking infrastructure. It follows an earlier tie-up with Utkarsh Small Finance Financial institution to particularly supply secured playing cards by its platform, marking the fintech’s transfer into mainstream retail banking.

The collaboration introduces what the businesses name a “3 in 1 Tremendous Account,” combining a financial savings account, UPI funds, and a fixed-deposit-backed secured bank card geared toward increasing credit score entry for first-time debtors.

To open a 3-in-1 Tremendous Account, customers must make a hard and fast deposit of at the least ₹1,000 (about $11). The account earns curiosity on the deposit and presents a cashback on each transaction. It additionally features a UPI-on-credit function — a credit score line backed by the deposit that doesn’t require any earnings proof.

Sikaria instructed TechCrunch that secured playing cards have been chosen because the anchor product as a result of they match inside India’s zero-fee UPI system whereas nonetheless permitting the rewards and cashbacks that the platform was by no means designed to help.

“Our focus is to usher in customers who’ve the next propensity to interact with our merchandise,” he stated. “UPI occurs to be the core engagement and acquisition hook, however for individuals who don’t wish to have interaction in monetary providers or different merchandise that we launched, we don’t wish to serve them from a UPI or fee perspective.”

The partnership with Kotak Mahindra Financial institution comes quickly after Tremendous.cash teamed up with SoftBank-backed Juspay to launch a one-click checkout expertise for on-line retailers, aimed primarily at direct-to-consumer manufacturers.

About 1,000 retailers already use the answer, and Tremendous.cash plans to develop that community by partnerships with extra D2C gamers and different firms inside the Flipkart group, Sikaria stated.

The secured card earns service provider low cost income on transactions, and that funds the cashback, Sikaria stated. “Clearly, there’s a customary acquisition price to the accomplice financial institution that we cost to the financial institution, in order that comes as a monetization for us as effectively,” he added.

Tremendous.cash plans to situation about 200,000 secured playing cards a month beneath its partnership with Kotak earlier than increasing to different banks, Sikaria stated.

To date, Flipkart has invested about $50 million in Tremendous.cash to kick off its operations. Because the enterprise scales, the fintech plans to boost further capital — probably from exterior traders as effectively.

“We’d like extra capital for at the least a few years,” Sikaria stated. “Very quickly, we’ll begin formulating our capital-raise technique.”

He declined to say whether or not the following spherical would come from Flipkart or exterior traders however famous that Tremendous.cash is receiving inbound curiosity from “lots of traders.”

Within the meantime, Sikaria stated the corporate is holding its money burn low, describing its present month-to-month burn as a “low single-digit million quantity” with out offering specifics.

He added that Tremendous.cash is intentionally specializing in India’s prime 10 to 30 million customers, quite than competing with mass-market fee gamers reminiscent of Google Pay or PhonePe that concentrate on tons of of tens of millions.

“What we wish to do is construct a formidable secured card franchise with a worthwhile P&L — for us, the financial institution, and our clients as effectively,” Sikaria stated.