India's leading merchant payment company, BharatPe, has raised ₹50 crore ($ 7 million) in debt from digital debt finance platform Northern Arc Capital. This is the sixth round of debt financing for BharatPe in 2021.

In January this year, BharatPe raised ₹200 crore (~US$ 26 million) from three top debt companies in the country - Alteria Capital, InnoVen Capital and Trifecta Capital, which was followed by additional fund raising from ICICI Bank and Axis Bank.

In a press release, the Chennai-based NBFC Northern Arc said it has directly disbursed over ₹3,500 crore over the last financial year to MSMEs, households, financial institutions and mid market corporates. It has also enabled a flow of financing of over ₹1,000 crore from reputed Development Financial Institutions from across the world to underbanked small businesses and households. “Northern Arc has continually worked towards extending credit to like-minded organisations such as BharatPe that enable financial access to small businesses and merchants across the country,” Bama Balakrishnan, COO, Northern Arc said in the statement.

Throughout the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, BharatPe has continued to support the credit requirements of its merchant partners and has emerged as one of the largest B2B fintech lenders in the country. Having already facilitated disbursals of over ₹1,600 crore (~US$ 230 million) to more than 2 lakh merchants since the launch of the lending vertical, BharatPe aims to disburse ₹14,000 crore (~US$ 2 billion) in business loans by March 2023, the release stated.

“At BharatPe, we are committed to bridge the credit gap for SMEs and small merchants in the country. We have considerably ramped up our lending business in the last year and have set an ambitious target of facilitating disbursals to the tune of US$ 1 billion to over 10 lakh merchants by the end of current fiscal (FY22),” the release quoted BharatPe Group President Suhail Sameer as saying.

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