Meta is in talks to invest in Kunal Shah’s CRED at a $4 billion valuation, according to reporting from Moneycontrol. The tech giant has explored investing tens of millions of dollars as primary capital in the Bengaluru-based fintech startup, though it has also evaluated other options, including a full acquisition at a lower valuation while retaining Shah in an operating role.
The proposed $4 billion valuation marks a modest increase from CRED’s marked-down $3.5 billion valuation in 2025, but remains significantly below the $6.4 billion peak the company reached during its last major funding round in 2022, according to Moneycontrol. CRED declined to comment on the reported discussions, while Meta did not respond to inquiries.
Meta’s strategic interest in CRED reflects a broader push to establish deeper roots in India’s payments ecosystem. With ownership of CRED, Meta would gain a full-stack payments play: Facebook and Instagram serving as a discovery layer, WhatsApp powering commerce, and CRED providing payments infrastructure. The move comes as both WhatsApp Pay and CRED have struggled to gain meaningful market share in India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which processes more than 23 billion transactions worth over $300 billion monthly, according to Moneycontrol’s reporting.
PhonePe and Google Pay together account for nearly 80 percent of all UPI transactions, while WhatsApp Pay, CRED, and Amazon Pay each hold less than 1 percent market share, according to the latest available data cited by Moneycontrol. That concentration has left room for a well-capitalized challenger willing to invest heavily in user acquisition and merchant partnerships.
CRED has shown improving unit economics. The company reported consolidated operating revenue of Rs 2,735 crore in fiscal year 2025, a 16 percent increase from the prior year, with operating losses declining 51 percent to Rs 298 crore, according to a company statement released in January. Monthly transacting users rose 14.5 percent to 1.26 crore, while transaction frequency increased 34 percent to 14.4 transactions per user per month. Average revenue per user stood at Rs 2,000, described as the highest in the payments ecosystem, according to Moneycontrol.
Since its 2018 founding, CRED has raised around $1 billion across multiple rounds from investors including Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Peak XV Partners, Greenoaks Capital, and DST Global. For Meta, a CRED investment would extend a track record of backing Indian startups—the company has previously invested in quick-commerce platform Meesho and edtech platform Unacademy, according to Moneycontrol.
Sources
- Moneycontrol — Meta investment discussions, valuation history, CRED financial performance, UPI market dynamics, prior investor list
- Inc42 — Confirmation of Meta-CRED investment talks and acquisition exploration
- Forbes India — CRED’s prior funding round and valuation decline in 2025
- YourStory — CRED Series F funding round and $6.4 billion valuation in 2022
