BNPL firm Uni Cards buys P2P NBFC

New Delhi: Uni Cards has acquired peer-to-peer lending platform OHMY Technologies (known as OMLP2P), according to a person aware of the development. OML owns a NBFC-P2P licence from the Reserve Bank of India.

As per the MCA records, Uni Cards founders Nitin Gupta, Laxmikant Vyas and Prateek Jindal have joined the board of OMLP2P as directors on 7 January.

LinkedIn profiles of both OMLP2P founders Surendra Jalan and Pramod Kumar Akhramka show that they served the company till January 2023.

The cost of acquisition is not known yet, but it is believed to be in the range of ₹3-4 crore. For FY22, OMLP2P posted ₹33 lakh in revenue from operations; and the losses for the period were ₹1 crore.

In addition, it is also not clear whether the deal has received the RBI approval yet.

Last year in September, Mint wrote a detailed story on how the ambitious plans of Uni went for a toss post the RBI circular—which barred companies from loading PPIs such as prepaid cards or mobile wallets using credit lines issued by non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs) and banks. Overnight, the circular killed the business model of Uni and many others in the market.

Mint first wrote that the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) company Uni—which initially worked with RBL Bank and SBM Bank India to roll out prepaid cards and topped up the cards with credit lines from about four-five NBFC partners— applied for its own NBFC licence in December 2021.

However, the process is still on hold, according to a person aware of the matter.

A person aware of the development had then informed Mint that majority of the credit lines Uni gave to its customers came through P2P NBFC Liquiloans.

Post digital lending guidelines from the RBI, it has become difficult for unregulated fintech lending platforms to operate. Several industry officials believe that in the current scenario owning an NBFC is only way to go if a fintech wants to build and scale a lending business.

Early last year before June when the only fintech business in town was about offering credit lines on PPI, Uni acquired PPI-licence holder Weizmann Impex Service Enterprise in a deal “expected to be in the range of ₹30-40 crore,” Mint had then quoted two people aware of the development.

The PPI acquisition is of no use to Uni now; and the company is currently planning to launch credit cards.

Uni has till date raised $88.7 million in equity from Accel Partners, Lightspeed, General Catalyst, Sparkle Fund and others. During FY22, the fintech firm reported a loss of ₹139.5 crore; whereas its revenue from operations stood at ₹13.7 crore.

Confirming the acquisition of OMLP2P, Nitin Gupta said, “This acquisition has been in play long before new guidelines or for that matter long before June 2022. It’s important part of our strategy.” He did not comment on the cost of acquisition.