Fintech startup Slice is planning to launch UPI payments features for its users as it pursues to become a payments first product company from being a credit only product company.

Rajan Bajaj, Founder and CEO, Slice says, “the UPI payments feature will be available to its waiting list of ten million customers who have not been able to get access to credit yet and its existing millions of customers.”

“With UPI what we have done is from being an exclusive club that Slice is, we’ve made it into an open platform which anyone having a smartphone can use,” adds Bajaj.

Slice, which started as a buy now pay later (BNPL) product in 2016 and transformed to a card product in 2019, enters a crowded UPI payments market where the likes of Walmart-backed PhonePe and Google Pay have already established themselves. But a projected rule by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the body that operates the popular UPI payments infrastructure, to cap single payments app processes provides room for more companies to participate in the market.

According to reports the company is planning to launch other payment products such as NFC (near-field communication) in the coming years using the free cash flows that it generates from its credit product.

The startup is at more than Rs.2000 crore gross transaction value (GTV) allowing the company to enjoy economies of scale because of that, as per reports.

Bajaj says, “Slice is well capitalized while noting that overall investors don’t look at China as aggressively as before and interest rates are high in the US. So, India continues to be a strong destination from both equity and capital markets side and we don’t think that is going to stop although investors are cautious.”