Naspers : PayU invests US$11.5mn in PaySense

India, July 20, 2018 - PayU, an online payment service provider and Naspers' fintech company, today announced an investment of USD 11.5mn in PaySense as part of a Series B round of $18 million. PaySense provides Indian consumers access to a credit line based on an alternative-data decisioning model. PaySense utilizes India Stack to create a digitized infrastructure across government and business services in India.

This is PayU's second round of investment in PaySense which will help realize PayU's vision of seamless credit access to all. Last year, PayU and Nexus Ventures had participated in the Series A round which was led by Jungle Ventures. This investment demonstrates PayU's strong commitment towards strengthening its credit play in untapped high-growth markets, like India, Poland, and LATAM and in turn creating a strong powerhouse of Fintech services.

Headquartered in Mumbai, PaySense has the vision to become the leading risk assessment provider for over 160 million Indian households, currently underserved by traditional credit avenues. It bases an innovative credit decisioning model, by leveraging millions of data points to profile individuals based on their financial behaviors within a Social Graph of a vast number of potential borrowers. PaySense has been growing at a rapid pace and has scaled up the business manifold.

Fady Abdel-Nour, Global Head - M&A and Investments, Naspers' PayU, said, 'Our mission at PayU has always been to democratize credit across all our markets. Companies like PaySense encompass everything we're looking for: a great product, an outstanding team and an extensive market opportunity. We're excited to continue to synergize forces with PaySense and are positive that this investment will help us strengthen our position in the consumer lending space in India. We believe India's fin-tech story is just getting started and will continue to invest in this space'

Prashanth Ranganathan, Co-Founder and CEO, PaySense, added, 'India has one of the largest financially underserved populations in the world. We are constantly innovating to serve this population using net new ways of assessing these customers through our instant credit decisioning models. We enable access to a wide array of customized credit products that serve their life's needs - whether its aspirational e-commerce purchases, family vacations, home renovations or a medical emergency.

We continue to invest in our tech and team to deliver an exceedingly simple, fast and fully digital process for our customers. At this time, it's opportune to bolster our relationship with PayU, as we share an allied vision of enabling more consumers in India to access the digital credit sector. The consumer lending market in India is ripe for disruption and this capital will equip us to focus on this huge, untapped market potential', he further added.

Siddhartha Jajodia, Global Head of Credit Business, PayU, said, 'The strategic use of data is something we firmly believe in at PayU. PaySense is a great example of a company who are doing just this in India. PaySense has a robust growth trajectory and we believe it has high potential to become a strong alternative to the current credit infrastructure. PaySense's ambition of reaching out to underserved consumers to provide access to credit resonates with PayU's strategy. This investment in PaySense is part of an overarching goal to reinforce our credit portfolio in India and we will continue to strive for that through a mix of organic and investment approach.'

PayU, a Naspers company, is focused on empowering people through financial services and is one of the biggest investors in the fintech space, with investments that include Citrus Pay and Kreditech. PayU supports over 300,000+ merchants and millions of consumers making payments online. PaySense's ambition to innovatively target those 'new-to-credit' segment by taking into account their social and behavioral data and thereby assess creditworthiness, which is a perfect fit for PayU; as the company creates the best-in-class customer experience to a broad range of users.

Naspers is the world's leading internet and entertainment group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, with investments in Tencent and others.

About PaySense

PaySense (https://www.gopaysense.com) is a 90+ member team comprising of engineers, data scientists, product managers, and experts from finance, e-commerce and business development. Serving customers in over 50 cities across India, the company has disbursed over 60,000 loans in the last 12 months. PaySense offers a fully digital loan, flexibility in loan plans and repayment options that run over 3 - 24 months.

About PayU

PayU uses its payments heritage and expertise to deliver financial services in emerging markets. Our local operations in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa enable us to be experts in these countries and provide the best solutions for the local market. PayU is the leading online payment service provider in 17 high growth markets, dedicated to creating a fast, simple and efficient payment process for merchants and buyers. Our 250+ payment methods and PCI certified platforms are designed to meet every consumer's needs.

The markets in which PayU operates represent a potential consumer base of nearly 2.3 billion people and a huge growth potential for merchants. PayU has more than 1,800 payment specialists based in these local markets supporting PayU's 300,000+ merchants and the millions of consumers making online payments.

PayU is a Naspers company, a global internet and media group and one of the largest technology investors in the world. For more information, please visit www.naspers.com