Can MobiKwik’s Lending Ambitions Ease The Payments Burden?

Lending margins are growing and a NBFC licence in its kitty — MobiKwik eyes life beyond payments

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MobiKwik’s Q4 results at the tail end of last week brought up some interesting views over this past week, but our reading of the numbers raised a deceptively simple question: If payments GMV is growing 58% and UPI transactions are exploding 170%, why has payments revenue barely moved for over a year?

This contradiction sits at the centre of the company’s entire story and could define the future for MobiKwik, which has painfully pieced together its fintech empire in the past year and a half. 

On the surface, the quarter looked reassuring for the Delhi NCR-based giant. For instance, it turned EBITDA positive and PAT also recovered some momentum. As lending margins improved, management sounded far more confident than it did during FY25’s regulatory disruptions.

MobiKwik increasingly appears to be moving away from being a payments company and toward becoming a regulated lending and merchant-finance platform. Its recent acquisition of an NBFC licence is a key piece in this. 

The problem is that the transition is still incomplete, while the economics of the legacy payments business continue weakening, there is a top-of-the-funnel threat for MobiKwik. 

After a difficult FY25 marked by regulatory disruptions in its lending business and heavy losses, MobiKwik is showing signs of operational turnaround. The........

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