Kiwi is intensifying its push into credit via India’s UPI system, partnering with Yes Bank to launch Kiwi Postpaid, aiming to onboard five million users and deepen digital lending in the country.
Kiwi is widening its push into credit on India’s Unified Payments Interface with a new partnership with Yes Bank, introducing a credit line product called Kiwi Postpaid as it looks to deepen usage beyond its existing co-branded credit card business. The fintech said eligible users can borrow up to Rs 50,000 through the app, and chief business officer Sumeet Basrani said the company expects at least 5 million people to be onboarded over the next five years to access credit on UPI or UPI-linked credit cards.
The move builds on Kiwi’s earlier partnerships with four card issuers: AU Small Finance Bank, Yes Bank, Axis Bank and Punjab National Bank. Business Standard reported that Basrani, who joined Kiwi in March 2026, sees a gap in the market for consumers with stable incomes and bureau records who still do not hold a credit card. In his view, credit on UPI can offer a more flexible way to finance everyday purchases while keeping the transaction inside the payments system.
Credit on UPI was launched by the National Payments Corporation of India in 2023, but adoption has remained modest. Even so, lenders and fintech groups are now showing more interest as they look for new ways to distribute credit through the country’s dominant real-time payments rail. Basrani told Business Standard that wider distribution should improve awareness among both users and merchants, and said the structure gives lenders better visibility over how funds are used than a cash transfer into a bank account.
That logic has already prompted a series of launches across the sector. LiveMint and The Economic Times reported that Punjab National Bank has teamed up with Kiwi on a RuPay-based credit card that supports UPI payments and digital onboarding, while AU Small Finance Bank has also launched a Kiwi-linked card. Earlier this year, Moneycontrol reported that Kiwi raised $24 million in Series B funding led by Vertex Ventures South East Asia & India, with the company aiming to issue 1 million RuPay credit cards by 2027 and process more than 5 million merchant transactions a month across 600 cities.
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