Indian fintech startup CRED has introduced new features to help customers manage their cash flow and gain deeper insights as the company looks to drive engagement by providing much-needed personal finance tools.
The Bengaluru-based startup, primarily known for its credit card bill payment and consumer lending services, is now foraying into the personal finance management space with a new feature it has dubbed CRED Money.
CRED Money consolidates financial data from all your bank accounts and allows you to track your bank transactions and recurring payments (SIP investments, rent, staff salaries, etc.) on a single dashboard. Users can also search for transactions by merchant or category and receive reminders.
The startup said the feature leverages India's Account Aggregator Framework, a financial data sharing system introduced by the Reserve Bank of India to provide greater transparency and user control over personal financial information. The framework allows consumers to grant temporary, purpose-specific access to their financial data across multiple institutions through standardized encrypted channels.
The company said it doesn't intend to make any money from the new feature.
CRED, which is valued at $6.4 billion, said the feature will use data science algorithms to analyze large volumes of transactions made by users across multiple accounts. The platform aims to translate this information into succinct, actionable insights to help users identify spending patterns, investment opportunities, and areas for financial optimization.
CRED claims that around 70% of India's wealthy individuals are burdened with their finances fragmented across multiple platforms, a situation made worse by the fact that an average customer makes around 200 transactions a month. This administrative overhead can lead to suboptimal decision-making, impacting credit scores.
“More money means more problems,” CRED founder Kunal Shah said in a statement. “We've built a product to improve all high net worth individuals' relationship with money and reduce their financial anxiety through trusted, insightful experiences,” he added.
Since its launch, CRED has positioned itself as a platform for affluent and creditworthy consumers. However, like any other demographic, this demographic is not immune to financial mismanagement: Many users neglect to check their bank statements, ignore important notifications from their banks, and often end up with penalties for late payments.
CRED Money, which will be launched in stages starting Thursday, is the latest in a series of additional services from the startup, which has been steadily expanding its portfolio, most recently acquiring mutual fund and stock investing platform Kuvera. CRED's product development process involves extensive internal testing, with new features piloted by employees for months before being released to customers. This approach ensures that only features that demonstrate clear value reach a broad user base, CRED executives said.