Realme is witnessing strong growth in the smartphone segment in India but it wants to closely follow and possibly beat Xiaomi in every other segment as well. Xiaomi recently took the wraps off its personal loan platform Mi Credit in India. Now, Realme today also entered the country’s financial sector with the launch of Realme PaySa.
Realme PaySa (stylized as Realme Payसा) is described as India’s first full-stack financial services platform. The service has been unveiled in partnership with Oppo’s fintech arm FinShell (as seen in the header image above) and its CEO Varun Sridhar will lead Realme PaySa efforts in the country.
The platform pits itself directly against Mi Credit and is designed to extend loans to both individuals and SMEs (small or medium-scale business) in India. It’s also offering screen insurance (for new and old phones in partnership with ICICI Lombard) and 3 free credit reports in partnership with CreditMantri, which pulls info from Equifax, which I certainly have to warn you about because of a widespread data leak it was involved in earlier in 2017.
Realme India CEO Madhav Sheth introduced Realme PaySa by saying, “Be it payments or investment, Realme PaySa app will provide all. Our mission is to enable our customers to leap on to the financial services platform.”
Talking about loans, Realme PaySa will offer personal loans between Rs 8,000 and Rs 1 lakhs with a repayment window of up to five years. You can repay it as soon as within 5 months. Businesses, on the other hand, can secure loans between Rs 50,000 and Rs 20 lakhs using the platform. Realme has partnered with EarlySalary and LendingKart as its loan providers.
One of the major highlights for Realme Paysa will have to be the real-time chat feature. This chat service isn’t run by bots and you are connected to human support staff, with whom you can talk in both English or Hinglish. They will be available 7 days a week, 16 hours a day to understand your financial needs and help you easily secure loans.
The company has launched the platform with only four key products – free credit report, personal loans, business loans, and screen insurance. But this doesn’t make it full-stack, right? Yeah, Realme plans to introduce more financial services like mutual funds, digital Gold, and SIPs (systematic investment plan), life and non-life insurance.
In addition, Sridhar on stage said that they’re “studying different mobile financing tools, mobile payment tools UPI/ PPI and we will soon come up with a [payment] solution.” It would be similar to other payment platforms like Mi Pay, Google Pay, and more. Realme also intends to add more financials tools for tax, budgeting and other needs.
Realme PaySa is currently in beta and the Android app is already live for users to try out and provide feedback. It can be installed on any Android app and will be available on iOS very soon. Once the testing is complete, the app will be open to everyone and come pre-installed on Realme phones in the future.
