The proposed $4 billion (₹38,000 crore) valuation is slightly higher than the company’s adjusted $3.5 billion valuation in 2025, but still falls significantly short of the $6.4 billion valuation seen during its last major funding in 2022.
Although the tech giant is considering investing tens of millions of dollars as primary capital in Cred, it is also exploring alternative options. These include a full acquisition at a lower valuation and integrating founder Kunal Shah into the organization in an operational capacity, according to sources familiar with the talks.
“It’s unclear which direction Meta will ultimately take. However, what’s evident is that Cred is in need of new capital and Meta is open to supporting the company,” stated one of the mentioned sources.
Neither Cred nor Meta replied to Moneycontrol’s inquiries.
Meta’s interest in Cred makes sense as it aims to establish a significant foothold in India’s payments sector. Owning Cred would give Meta a comprehensive setup: Facebook and Instagram could function as discovery platforms, WhatsApp would handle commerce, and Cred would supply the payments infrastructure.
Meta, through WhatsApp Pay, competes against Cred in India’s digital payments arena. Despite their aspirations, both entities have faced challenges in capturing substantial market share within the UPI ecosystem.
UPI is recognized as the world’s largest real-time payments network, processing over 23 billion transactions valued at more than $300 billion every month.
The market is predominantly concentrated, with Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay making up nearly 80% of all transactions. Other competitors like WhatsApp Pay, Cred, and Amazon Pay have struggled to achieve notable scale, each holding less than 1% of the market, among them accounting for less than 2% collectively, based on the latest available statistics.
Founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah, Cred aims at affluent and creditworthy users in India.
In a recent statement, Prakash Padukone discussed his daughter Deepika and Ranveer Singh’s parenting approach, remarking that ‘Deepika does a lot more, but Ranveer helps a lot…’
The Bengaluru-based fintech unicorn reported consolidated operating revenue of ₹2,735 crore for FY25, showing a 16% increase compared to the prior year. Operating losses decreased by 51% to ₹298 crore, according to a company announcement made on January 30. The firm has yet to submit its official figures to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).
Total losses for the year dropped 11.5% year-on-year to ₹1,457 crore. Gross margins reached around 70% in FY25, demonstrating improved operating leverage as the company expanded its product line and monetization efforts.
Throughout the year, Cred saw its monthly transacting users rise by 14.5% to 1.26 crore, while transaction frequency jumped by 34%, averaging 14.4 transactions per user each month. The total payment value processed on the platform rose by 23% year-on-year to ₹8.5 lakh crore.
The company noted that greater adoption of multiple products played a key role in enhanced monetization.
Approximately 45% of active users utilized three or more products on the platform. The average revenue per user (ARPU) stood at ₹2,000, the highest in the payments ecosystem, with users engaging with four or more products generating an ARPU 75% higher than the platform’s average.
Since its establishment eight years ago, Cred has raised nearly $1 billion from investors including Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Peak XV Partners, Greenoaks Capital, DST Global, and several others.
For Meta, a successful investment in Cred would represent another strategic move following its backing of startups like Meesho and Unacademy in the past.
