Introduction
CRED is India’s first application that rewards its users for paying their credit card bills on time. It was founded by Kunal Shah, former founder of Freecharge in April, 2018.
Kunal Shah started CRED with a vision to create an exclusive community for India’s most trustworthy and creditworthy individuals.
It helps to manage and pay all your credit cards in one place. It also reminds us about payments, offers on our credit card, and also monitors your spending’s.
CRED Tagline: pay your credit card bills & earn rewards.
How CRED APP was started?
After selling Freecharge in 2015, Kunal Shah was researching another idea to make people’s life better. While researching, he found that so many things are automated in the developed nations like super markets with no cashiers, petrol pumps with no attendant, etc but there’s no such trustworthy system that helps the individuals to pay the right amount of credit card bills on time with zero additional charges.
According to one Kunal Shah’s interview with Yourstory, There are over 30 hidden charges and exorbitant interest costs that haunt you even if you pay a single rupee less than your full bill. The current model thrives on you making an error. It wants you to faulter. The system has taken the good guys for granted for far too long. Creditworthy individuals deserve better.
But the problem was, why would people pay their credit card bills through their APP, then the idea came to reward the trustworthy credit card users, who pay their credit card bills on time. With this strategy to attract users, CRED was started in April, 2018.
Now, Cred is getting almost 341 thousand traffic per month organically with more than 3 thousand backlinks to their 690+ pages. (As per Ahrefs.com)
Here is the organic traffic growth chart of Cred since January 2019.
Top Performing Pages of Cred in July 2023.
CRED APP Features
CRED offers you to manage all your credit cards at one place.
Whenever you pay your credit card bills you’ll get some CRED Coins that you can use to get discounts on various brands partnered with CRED.
It analyzes your total spending, hidden charges, and tracks credit limits and reminds you about all these to avoid such additional charges.
Apart from all these, few more amazing features of CRED,
CRED Protect – CRED protect is the feature of the app that reads the statements from the email and gives information about- balance, due date, bank charges, and expense bifurcation.
Smart Statements – This feature helps the user to streamline their expenses by analyzing the CREDit card statements.
CRED Powerplay – It is the new feature of CRED after it has become the official partner of IPL 2020. It enables 100% cashback on the entire bill provided the bill is paid in the first six overs of both the innings. Also, the winner gets an exclusive spot in the virtual fan box.
CRED Funding Rounds
| Announced Date | Funding Round Type | Money Raised | Lead Investors |
| Nov 6, 2018 | Seed Round | $30 Million | Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, RTP Global |
| Jan 1, 2019 | Seed Round | — | Rainmatter Capital |
| Apr 16, 2019 | Series A | ₹1.8 Billion | Sriram Krishnan, Sriharsha Majety, Rainmatter Capital, Nithin Kamath, Nami Zarringhalam, Mukesh Bansal, Haresh Chawla, Amrish Rau, Amit Mital, Alan Mamedi |
| Jul 26, 2019 | Series B | $120 Million | Gemini Investments, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global Management, Hillhouse Capital Group, General Catalyst, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group. |
| July, 2019 | Series B | $4 Million | Sequoia Capital India |
Aug, 2019 | Series B | $120M | Gemini Investments, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital India |
| Dec, 2020 | Series C | $80M | DST Global, Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital |
| Apr, 2021 | Series D | $215M | Multiple Investors |
| Oct, 2021 | Series E | $251M | Multiple Investors |
| May, 2022 | Series E | $7.74M | Rise Global Capital, SF Roofdeck MA |
| June, 2022 | Series F | $140M | Multiple Investors |
CRED APP Business Model
Currently there is no business model of CRED. Currently, CRED is focused on expanding its user base and not focuses on making any profit. Though the primary vision is to create a trustworthy community and company will further build their business model.
Various sources say they’re earning money from listing the brands in their CRED Coin redemption but it’s a conflict but CRED might use this in the future.
There’s a prediction that it will use their data to monetize their business. Currently, the app creates a database of users based on the bank details, bill payment history, rewards used, and interests but not share this data with any 3rd party. Therefore they can do multiple uses of users’ data in the future and can make a profitable business model around it.
How does CRED earn money?
CRED has diverse revenue streams:
- Transaction Fees: CRED earns revenue from transactions made using its app, CRED Pay. Every time a transaction is made via the CRED app, the platform charges a small percentage of the transaction value, depending on the type of transaction.
These include rent payments with a small transaction fee, payments using the CRED Flash facility that may have a processing fee and international transactions on linked credit cards that might incur a foreign currency fee.
- Affiliate Income: CRED makes money by partnering up with businesses and promoting their products or services. The platform earns a commission on the sale of those products and charges businesses for advertising.
Additionally, CRED offers exclusive deals to its users from its partner brands and gets a share of the revenue when users take advantage of them.
- Revenue from Loan: CRED earns revenue by charging interest on the loans provided through P2P lending and its CRED Stash service. With the CRED Stash service, users can get instant credit lines. Unlike traditional credit cards, CRED Stash offers lower interest rates and charges no fee for registration.
- CRED RentPay: Credit card users can pay their monthly rent to their landlord’s with CRED’s help. CRED charges a commission of 1-2% on these payments.
- Customer data: CRED is currently dealing with the top 1% of credit card users in India. It focuses on individuals with a credit score of 750 or above. It gathers detailed insights into their purchasing habits and interactions with the platform. CRED then sold this valuable data to other financial institutions.
CRED Competitors
- CheQ
- Mobikwik
- PhonePe
- Paytm
Also check out 👉🏻 Khatabook Business Model
How CRED APP Works?
Step 1. Download the CRED App and register with your mobile no.
Step 2. Once the account is set up, the app scans the credit cards linked to the registered phone number.
Step 3. Users get access to the app if the credit score is higher than 750, otherwise the user went to their waitlist.
Step 4. If you get the access, then CRED app requires access to the mail id to read and scan your credit card transactions like due dates, statements from the applicable services, etc.
Step 5. And then you can earn CRED coins after paying your every credit card bill. One CRED coin equals Rs 1. These coins can then be used to claim rewards.
Step 6. Users can also choose to burn the coins to win cashback and then the cashback is directly credited to your credit card.
Most Asked FAQ’s
Who is the founder of CRED?
Kunal Shah is the founder of CRED.
What is CRED?
CRED is a rewards-based credit card payment app. It helps users manage their credit cards and rewards them for making payments on time.
Is the CRED app safe?
CRED app is trustworthy as the records of the founder are solid. Also, it does not ask for any important information, such as the date of expiry or CVV.
Is CRED profitable?
As per the Economic Times, CRED’s revenue saw a big jump of 66% to ₹2,473 crore in 2023-24. Though, the startup still had an operating loss of ₹609 crore. However, the good news is that these losses have come down from ₹1,024 crore from the previous financial year.
How to contact CRED?
There’s no official contact number. Users can drop a mail on the email id – support@CRED.club.
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