Cash is by far the prevailing payment acceptance method for small merchants in India. For potential lenders, these merchants present a challenge because their income and creditworthiness is difficult or impossible to verify. BharatPe provides a lending service to small merchants based on sales of goods and services it handles as a processor of QR code-based payments. Loan payments are collected on the same processing platform. BharatPe retains a percentage of new QR code-based sales. This is an incentive for merchants to encourage consumers to pay by QR code instead of cash. Loans range ...