Google is partnering with four Indian banks—HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Federal Bank to grant consumer loans online as the race for a $1 trillion digital finance market strengthens.
Caesar Sengupta, vice president of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative and Payments, said: “We’ve learned that when we build for India, we build for the world.” With the frequent use of smartphones, online lending is becoming increasingly popular as it brings minimal paperwork without credit ratings because fintechs use data and algorithms to deduce risk.
Nearly 55 million people in over 300,000 towns and villages have downloaded Google’s payment app to make payments amounting to $30 billion in annual transactions, Google said. According to an investment banking company Credit Suisse, the overall lending market is anticipated to expand to $1 trillion by 2023 from $200 billion at present. Cash still takes up 70% of all Indian transactions and China is much advanced in its mobile payment market worth more than $5 trillion.
Google is not the only company to chase India’s digital finance market. Other global names including Facebook and Whatsapp are also focused on developing the country’s market, said Mukesh Ambani.