In a report examining Meta’s proposed $900 million investment for a 20% stake in CRED, along with the appointment of CRED founder Kunal Shah as global head of WhatsApp, GTRI said the deal highlights a broader trend in which Indian fintech startups appear increasingly focused on eventual acquisition by foreign firms rather than building long-term Indian-owned digital champions.
The report noted that India’s digital payments ecosystem is already heavily influenced by foreign technology companies. Walmart controls about 72% of PhonePe, Google owns Google Pay, and Meta operates WhatsApp Pay. According to GTRI, Meta’s proposed investment in CRED would further strengthen the presence of foreign technology firms in a sector built largely on public digital infrastructure such as Aadhaar, UPI and India Stack.
GTRI Founder Ajay Srivastava said the proposed transaction is particularly significant because of the nature of the data held by CRED. Founded in 2018, the company has accumulated extensive information on consumer financial behaviour through its 17 million users, including data on credit cards, repayment histories, spending patterns, bill payments, loans, investments, insurance purchases and UPI transactions.
The report said CRED processes more than 40% of India’s credit card bill payments, giving it a detailed view of the financial activities of affluent consumers.
While CRED does not currently provide customer data to Meta, GTRI expressed concern that such data could eventually become directly or indirectly accessible to the social media giant. The report warned that the information could potentially be used for purposes such as training artificial intelligence models.
Srivastava said India’s startup ecosystem has witnessed several cases where companies founded by Indian entrepreneurs later came under foreign ownership. The report cited PhonePe as an example. Founded in 2015, the company became part of Flipkart in 2016 and effectively came under Walmart’s control following Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart in 2018.
GTRI said observers have raised concerns that CRED could follow a similar path if Meta were to increase its ownership stake in the future. The report also noted that WhatsApp already has more than 500 million users in India and that, since the National Payments Corporation of India removed onboarding restrictions on WhatsApp Pay in December 2024, Meta has been able to offer UPI-based payments across its entire user base in the country.
According to the report, payments are likely to be only the first stage of expansion, with lending, insurance, wealth management, merchant services and AI-driven financial products expected to follow. In such a scenario, the financial data held by CRED could become a key strategic asset.
Drawing a comparison with China, GTRI said the country developed its digital payments ecosystem through domestic platforms such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, retaining ownership and strategic control within Chinese companies. India, by contrast, has allowed foreign firms to establish dominant positions on top of publicly funded digital infrastructure, the report said.
GTRI called for greater regulatory scrutiny and transparency regarding the proposed investment. It said regulators should seek clarity on what assurances that Meta will have “no access to customer data” actually mean, whether Meta will receive board representation, whether the sharing of aggregated or anonymised data will be permitted, and how future joint products will address user consent and data governance.
The report said the broader issue is whether India is gradually allowing control over the financial data of millions of economically active citizens to shift into foreign-owned digital ecosystems.