Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

In my experience, innovation in fintech generally isn’t about what you can do differently, but who can do it better. 

Earlier this week, months after the world had moved on from the money-draining buy now, pay later (BNPL) model, India’s credit card bill payment app Cred launched its BNPL feature. Cred Flash offers a customised spending limit to its members that can be repaid in 30 days, and a Tap and Pay feature. 

Both of these, I think, tell us a little bit more about Cred than the company will let on.

What the new BNPL feature says about Cred

Cred makes no bones about the fact that it targets “the top 1%”.

And it has a carefully curated image to reinforce that. Slick, premium, exclusive—and something that will appeal more to those who grew up in the nineties (a case in point being its ads featuring an older celebrity slate, such as Govinda, Madhuri Dixit, Rahul Dravid, et al). Cred targets this age group because, well, they are the ones with the money to spend, and by extension, are the top credit card users.