Meta In Talks With Kunal Shah's Cred To Invest At $4 Billion Valuation: Report

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has held discussions over the past few weeks to invest in Indian fintech and payments startup Cred at a valuation of around $4 billion, Moneycontrol reported.

The valuation being discussed is slightly higher than Cred’s revised $3.5 billion valuation in 2025, but significantly lower than its peak valuation of $6.4 billion in 2022.

The proposed investment could take the form of primary capital infusion worth tens of millions of dollars. However, Meta is also evaluating other strategic possibilities, including a full acquisition of Cred at a lower valuation.

Another option under consideration is bringing founder Kunal Shah into Meta in an operating role, though no final decision has been made.

Meta’s interest is driven by its broader ambition to strengthen its footprint in India’s digital payments ecosystem.

If the deal proceeds, Meta could potentially build an integrated “full stack” system, where Facebook and Instagram act as discovery platforms, WhatsApp enables commerce and conversational transactions, and Cred powers the payments layer.

Currently, Meta, with WhatsApp Pay, and Cred already compete in India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem. However, both companies have struggled to gain significant market share.

UPI processes over 23 billion transactions monthly, worth more than $300 billion, but is largely dominated by PhonePe and Google Pay, which together control nearly 80% of the market.

Other players, including Cred, WhatsApp Pay, and Amazon Pay, hold only marginal shares.

Cred, founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah, targets India’s affluent and creditworthy consumers. The company reported FY25 operating revenue of ₹2,735 crore, marking 16% year-on-year growth.

Operating losses declined sharply by 51% to ₹298 crore, while total losses narrowed 11.5% to ₹1,457 crore. The firm also reported strong unit economics with gross margins of around 70%.

User engagement also improved, with monthly transacting users rising 14.5% to 1.26 crore and transaction frequency increasing 34%. Total payment value processed reached ₹8.5 lakh crore.

Cred has raised around $1 billion so far from global investors including Tiger Global, DST Global, Peak XV Partners, and Ribbit Capital.

For Meta, this would mark another strategic India bet after earlier investments in companies like Meesho and Unacademy.