Kunal Shah, a serial entrepreneur and founder of fintech firm Cred, has acquired a non-banking finance company (NBFC) through an entity he has floated personally, sources aware of the matter said.

Shah, through Newtap Technologies Pvt Ltd, has acquired Parfait Finance & Investment, looking at a wider fintech play for Cred with lending.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved the acquisition, people briefed on the matter said.

Shah had previously cofounded mobile recharge firm Freecharge and sold it to Snapdeal for $400 million in 2015.

Cred, which is valued at around $4 billion, has also applied to the banking regulator for an account aggregator licence, people familiar with the development said.

RBI’s approval for the NBFC acquisition came in October, the people added.

Though not a direct acquisition, buying out a finance company signals that the fintech startup is keen to increase its footprint in the financial services space.

The application for an account aggregator license also ties in with its strategy of extending credit to customers, one of the people said.

Cred’s current lending product had a loan book of Rs 2,000 crore in August with less than 1% non-performing assets.

It already offers loans to approved users but that is through a partnership with IDFC First Bank.

Fintech firms in India are increasingly looking to have their own NBFCs to lend on their own as that enables them to design better products and have wider margins.

In August, it launched Cred Mint to enable users to on-lend to other Cred customers following a tie-up with LiquiLoans - an RBI registered P2P non-bank.

Since its launch as a credit card repayment player in 2018, Cred has forayed into e-commerce, lending, payments and now investment segments within its platform.

In August, Shah told ET that about 25-30% of all credit card bill payments in India were happening through Cred and that its commerce business now has over 2,000 brands.

“Cred (Dreamplug Technologies Pvt Ltd) has not applied to acquire an NBFC. Newtap Technologies Pvt Ltd, in which Kunal Shah has invested in a personal capacity, has applied to the RBI for approval to acquire a stake in Parfait Finance & Investments Private Limited,” the company told ET in an email.

Cred did not comment on the query related to it seeking an account aggregator licence.

An account aggregator license will enable consent-based access to customers to account history which will enable various lenders who join the aggregator platform to automate their lending.

Walmart and Flipkart-backed PhonePe recently got in-principle approval for the same.

At a time when credit card issuers are charging extremely high rates for roll-over and for EMI facilities, there is an opportunity to provide cheaper, seamless credit to the premium segment, said an industry expert.

In October, Cred closed a $251 million funding round in what was its third fundraising round this year, taking its valuation to $4 billion.

Existing investor Tiger Global and Falcon Edge co-led the Series E financing round, which also saw participation from Marshall Wace and Steadfast Venture Capital, DST Global, Insight Partners, and others.