E-tailer Working On Pilot With SBI, Axis Bank
Flipkart will let buyers avail monthly EMIs through their debit cards during its annual Big Billion Days sale, as the e-tailer attempts to shore up revenues during its much-hyped flagship event. So far, EMIs have been limited to purchases made using credit cards which is available across all big e-commerce sites. Based on its internal data, the company has created a 'white list' of users who will be given this option.
To launch this, Flipkart is working on a pilot with the State Bank of India and Axis Bank testing this new service which will kick off with large appliances and be eventually rolled out for mid to high value products across other categories, too. "Based on past purchases and other data points we have a set of customers who we can offer EMIs to through their debit cards. We saw that this population of buyers wase not being able to shop for high value products as they did not have credit cards. With this plan about to be introduced they can opt for higher priced items which shall push our overall sales volumes up," Snadeep Karwa, head of large appliances for Flipkart, told TOI.
He said because the number of debit cards vastly outnumbered credit cards in India it was time online retailers introduced this option for this group of consumers. The Reserve Bank of India data shows there were 79.38 crore debit card holders in the country as of June 2017, while credit card numbers stood at 3.14 crore.
Both, the white list of users and debit card EMIs from banks, will be ramped up in the run up to BBD sale across categories like smartphones, large appliances , electronics among others. Over the last one year, Flipkart has been pushing consumer finance programmes to boost sales. Flipkart testing debit card EMIs with large appliances comes on the back of the Tencent-backed company planning a six week high voltage advertisement campaign for this category as it aims to position this segment as a strong business just like smartphones.
No comments:
Post a Comment