NEW DELHI, India—Slice, an fintech startup that has built a “super card” for Millennials in India, said it has raised $20 million in a new financing round and is adding new features to change how people engage with their credit cards.
Even as hundreds of millions of consumers in India have a bank account today, only about 30 million have a credit card.
“Most people in the South Asian market are not eligible to get a credit card, and even many of those who are don’t bother to get one because the experience of signing up is too clumsy, time consuming, and the rewards don’t make up for it,” Tech Crunch explained.
Rajan Bajaj, founder and chief executive of Slice, said in an interview with TechCrunch that the startup, which has already amassed more than three-million users, is now bringing rewards to its app as it attempts to turn the plastic card into a larger financial instrument.
‘A Lot to be Desired’
“You use your card more often than you use Uber, Ola, Swiggy and Zomato combined. But the payment experience on the card leaves a lot to be desired. Eventually, if customers don’t see a value, they will abandon the card and move elsewhere,” he said. “Banks treat credit cards like a loan product instead of a high-frequency payment instrument and make money through late charges and interest rates. You see a random charge on your credit card statement, you don’t recognize it so now you have to deal with a customer representative. More than half such users give up and just accept those charges.”