Aishwarya Ramesh
Digital

Cashback for paying credit card bills? There's an app for that...

Cred wants to incentivise timely credit card bill payments - sometimes with reward points, sometimes with chocolate cake.

On April 2, the Delhi edition of the Times of India carried a front-page ad for an app that caught our eye. It was bold, black and had a clean, minimalist design - but what product was it advertising?

Cashback for paying credit card bills? There's an app for that...

Cred's full page ad on Times of India
Click on the image to enlarge

The ad was for an app called Cred. Freecharge co-founder Kunal Shah started the company and it gathered $25 million in funding from Sequoia Capital last year. In the fintech space, this app operates in the credit cards realm and allows users to keep track of their cards, make payments online and earn reward points and cashbacks for paying bills. Some of the brands that Cred has tied up with for offers include Ixigo, BookMyShow, Airbnb, FreshMenu, and Urban Ladder.

Recently, Cred has been doing a lot of advertising in the digital space, but today, they rented out prime advertising real estate in the Times of India. The second page talked about the benefits of the app and what it had to offer consumers.

Cashback for paying credit card bills? There's an app for that...

Turning to the next page, readers could see all the features that the app had to offer
Click on the image to enlarge

If that wasn't enough, Cred went the extra mile, offering chocolate cake to users on a seemingly random basis, reminding them to pay their bills on time.

Apart from the cake, one of its users pointed out that the app led him to a service he wasn't previously aware of.

Of course, like all good things, Cred's users also had a fair share of complaints with the customer service and the interface of the app.

Thanks to Kunal Shah's background as an entrepreneur and start-up investor, users have high expectations from this app. Before starting Cred, Shah sold Freecharge to Snapdeal for $400 million in 2015. He managed to secure $25 million in funding for Cred even before it started up. One can only wait and watch to see what kind of company Cred will become...

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