Samsung India will begin offering finance solutions in partnership with DMI Finance to customers buying the company’s smartphones, through its digital platform called Samsung Finance+. The solution is aimed at making finance options available to consumers who don’t have credit cards, debit cards or a credit history, thus increasing the consumer base for the No 2 smartphone player in the market.
The platform will be available with retailers – brick and mortar stores and large format retail stores – that will offer buyers finance options at zero percent interest on monthly instalments. The move comes ahead of the festive season during which demand is expected to peak in the weeks leading up to Diwali.
“It is a ‘Make for India’ initiative towards financial inclusion and Digital India. We will offer Samsung Finance+ to even those customers who have never taken a loan or do not have a credit history,” said Mohandeep Singh, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India.
“This will increase the pool of consumers who want to buy a smartphone and even upgrade from existing one to a higher priced model, thus leading to sales for us,” he added.
To start with, Samsung is launching Samsung Finance+ at over 5,000 stores in 30 cities across the country. Samsung plans to reach to 10,000 outlets in 100 cities by the end of 2019.
Consumers willing to buy Samsung smartphones can log into the in-store Samsung Finance+ application on a Galaxy Tab installed at the retailer outlet. After filling is their personal details for a simple KYC verification and credit scoring, they will get an offer screen on various Galaxy smartphones.
The loan approval and disbursement will take approximately 20-25 minutes, Singh said.
Samsung Finance+ was developed in India at the Samsung R&D Institute India-Bangalore, where engineers worked closely with Samsung India from early 2018 in assessing market requirements, designing product features, running limited pilots to validate the concepts and building a data driven, scalable multi-sided lending platform which can meet the demands of a market like India. The entire engineering design and development of this platform is done out of SRI Bangalore.
“We are honoured to have worked closely with Samsung over the past 24 months to deliver the first true partnership in India between an OEM and a lender. We have been able to marry Samsung’s world-class product and customer experience with DMI’s credit platform and technology stack to deliver to the client a seamless and intuitive experience which has the potential to transform the market for smartphones in India,” said Shivashish Chatterjee, Co-Founder, DMI Finance.
[“source=economictimes”]
