The AI-driven EMI financing platform ZestMoney has announced a strategic financial partnership with Northern Arc Capital that aims to address the growing demand for EMI financing in India. Under the long-term partnership, Northern Arc Capital has deployed $14 million till date and plans to fund various products offered by ZestMoney in a phased manner. ZestMoney aims to disburse $400 million in the next one year to improve access to credit in the country where credit card penetration remains very low.

Northern Arc Capital has been instrumental in enabling financial inclusion in India by providing financial institutions that target lending to middle-income households and small businesses with critical access to debt capital markets.

Similarly, Northern Arc’s partnership with ZestMoney will also span a broad array of both domestic and international structured funding markets in addition to providing direct funding on the origination platform.

ZestMoney is a technology platform that provides easy access to consumer loans to millions of Indian households, which currently have no access to credit cards or any other formal financing options due to insufficient credit history. ZestMoney’s unique platform uses mobile technology, digital banking and data science to solve the affordability problem.

“We are striving to develop a deeper and holistic ecosystem for expanding our palette of offerings and access to affordable EMI solutions.

We have built some great NBFC partnerships over the last three years and are excited to work with the Northern Arc that shares our vision for financial inclusion in India,” Lizzie Chapman, CEO, ZestMoney said.

Kshama Fernandes, MD & CEO of Northern Arc Capital said, “Building on our decade-long experience of underwriting granular retail portfolios, Northern Arc has adopted a digital approach toward direct lending.

Nimbus, our agile platform, seamlessly integrates with technology platforms like Zest Money enabling efficiencies of reach at scale. The partnership with Zest Money has been particularly exciting as Zest Money reaches out to a large universe of unbanked and underbanked borrowers across the country.”

ZestMoney also recently announced a strategic partnership worth $100 million with Credit Saison, a Japanese financial services company affiliated with Mizuho Financial Group and the third-largest credit card issuer with over 20 million cardholders in Japan. This funding will be directly deployed into ZestMoney’s core loan origination activity.

On the back of such financial partnerships, ZestMoney now collaborates with more than fifteen domestic NBFCs to deliver financial accessibility to vastly underserved consumers.