Paytm and non-banking financial company Fullerton India have announced a partnership to expand digital lending to MSMEs and consumers from smaller cities and towns.

"Fullerton India and One97 Communications Limited, which owns the brand Paytm, India’s leading digital payments and financial services platform, have announced a partnership to provide lending products to merchant partners and consumers. With the partnership, the two established institutions will leverage data-driven insights and wide reach to bring credit to new-to-credit users," Fullerton India said in a statement.

With this partnership, the fintech users will get Paytm Postpaid (buy-now-pay-later) feature on the Paytm platform. Besides, the partnership is set to offer lending products like merchant loans. Further, the two companies have promised to expand their products offering by including instant personal loans. "We have seen great adoption of the lending products among consumers and merchants on our platform. We believe that there is a massive opportunity to provide access to credit to merchants in small cities and towns. We continue to solely focus on helping our blue-chip lending partners, to bring seamless credit products to our customers and merchants. Consumer credit has been growing exponentially through products like Paytm Postpaid and Personal Loans, which we believe can be further expanded through our partnership with Fullerton India," Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, Paytm Lending said.

Founded in 2007, Fullerton India is one of the leading NBFCs, covering more than 628 branches, covering 600 towns and approximately 58,000 villages. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG)

SMFG holds a 74.9% stake in Fullerton India Credit Company Limited. Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH). holds a 25.1% stake in Fullerton India Credit Company Limited and is an independently operated strategic and operating investor in financial and related services in emerging markets.