PayPal on March 6 announced that it has entered into a partnership with FlexiLoans.com, a leading digital lending platform to provide freelancers, women entrepreneurs, sole proprietors, and MSMEs with collateral-free business loans.
The partnership will aim to offer MSMEs working capital for business expansion, purchasing stock, inventory, and other business-related expenditures.
Through this partnership, PayPal further reiterates its commitment to democratise access to financial services by bringing its global best practices and credit solution capabilities to Indian merchants who sell cross border using PayPal.
"The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been widespread, bringing economic strain to small businesses, freelancers and entrepreneurs who are facing myriad challenges to recover and sustain their businesses," the company said in a release.
The partnership aligns with PayPal’s mission to provide innovative credit solutions and will enable borrowers to access term loans from Rs 50,000 up to Rs 10,000,000 through a fast, hassle-free process that requires minimum documentation to merchants across 1500+ cities and towns in India. The tenure of the loan will range from 6-36 months.
Speaking on the partnership and launch of the credit solution, Anupam Pahuja, Vice President, India, South East Asia, Middle East & Africa, PayPal said, “Economic activity across India has been deeply affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and it is now when our MSMEs and freelancer community require solutions to kickstart business activity. Accessing capital through traditional channels has always been a challenge for most small businesses."
"Our partnership with FlexiLoans.com and combined expertise will enable us to reduce the existing gap in accessing credit, while accelerating growth for cross border selling and fast tracking the Vocal for Local and Digital India vision,” he further said.
Abhishek Kothari, co-founder of FlexiLoans.com has said, "We are committed to offer high-quality lending solutions and experiences to Indian SME ecosystems and this partnership is a significant step forward. With our advanced data science models and deep expertise in assessing millions of MSMEs with digital footprints, we are extremely excited to partner with Paypal, the global leader in payments and bring the COVID-impacted MSMEs back to growth and harness the new opportunities."