94% retailers prefer digital self-serve EMI financing: Pine Labs and ZestMoney Survey

ZestMoney and Pine Labs released the findings from a merchant survey conducted recently where they quizzed retailers on EMI adoption post-COVID-19.

The survey, undertaken during the partial lockdown in May, reveals that, while EMI solutions are seeing a massive demand, traditional consumer financing models have come under severe stress.

NBFCs have long relied on agents at stores to offer credit, but restrictions due to COVID-19 are making this model increasingly unattractive now.

By and large, the survey covered offline merchants dealing in electronics and consumer durables. The demand for electronics and household appliances continues to be high.

Here are some highlights of the merchant survey:

94% of the surveyed merchants feel digital self-serve EMI solutions will help them in these difficult times

72% of retailers were promoting EMI schemes during lockdown at outlets

63% of the merchants were doing home deliveries from stores to boost demand

85% of the merchants surveyed had finance executives from NBFCs at stores before lockdown

60% of retailers say finance agents are not visiting their store's post lockdown

90% of those surveyed are willing to assist customers in availing EMI options themselves

These findings suggest that, while 85% of the surveyed retailers had NBFC finance agents before the lockdown, most of them would prefer to not have them now. This opens a massive opportunity for credit/debit EMI options and fintech players in the ecosystem.

Apart from being contactless, the self-serve model will help free up space within stores and aid faster approvals for EMI financing.

Lizzie Chapman, Co-founder, and CEO, ZestMoney said, “At a time when affordability is all the more crucial, people will turn to EMI financing to meet their needs.

COVID has disrupted many traditional models, highlighting the need to go completely digital. In these challenging times, merchants are seeing the value of self-serve models to put their business back on track.

At ZestMoney, our focus has always been to build a robust, fully automated tech platform to simplify the entire process for the consumer and merchant network.  We hope to leverage our tech capabilities to help them adapt to this shift.”

B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs said, “At Pine Labs, we are working with some of the leading brands in the country and are providing affordable EMI solutions to their customers.

We continue to create opportunities around the COVID-19 crisis and are enabling growth for small merchants and traders by providing installment payments even in these difficult times.

Our association with ZestMoney will help us create new lending lines on top of our existing well-integrated card platforms. It is also heartening to discover from the survey findings that 72% of retailers were promoting EMI schemes during the lockdown.”

ZestMoney had entered into a strategic partnership with Pine Labs earlier this year to offer in-store digital EMI options to customers via their smart Point of Sale (PoS) devices.

That offering was aimed at new-to-credit customers. ZestMoney EMI on Pine Labs devices will be accessible across 20,000 outlets in 100 cities by next year.