Meta has made one of its biggest investments in India’s fintech industry by putting $900 million (around ₹8,550 crore) into Bengaluru-based fintech startup CRED. This is CRED’s first funding round in almost four years and shows Meta’s growing interest in India’s fast-growing digital payments and financial services market.
The Series H funding values CRED at $4.5 billion after the investment. While this is a strong recovery from its lower valuation in 2025, it is still below the company’s peak valuation of $6.4 billion in 2022. Apart from the investment, the deal has attracted attention because of major leadership changes, Meta’s long-term plans for WhatsApp, and fresh discussions about user data privacy.
Meta Becomes a Major Investor as CRED Expands
The investment includes both new funding and the purchase of existing shares. CRED’s board approved the issue of 4,82,167 Series H Compulsorily Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS) at ₹1,05,912 per share, raising around $537 million (₹5,107 crore) in fresh capital.
Through this primary investment, Meta gets an 11.84% stake in CRED. It is also buying existing shares worth around $400 million, taking its total ownership to nearly 20%. This makes Meta one of CRED’s biggest shareholders.
The latest funding also marks a comeback for CRED after its valuation dropped to about $3.5 billion in 2025. The new investment gives the company fresh capital to support its future growth.
Along with the funding, CRED has expanded its Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). The company added 1,00,451 new stock options worth around ₹1,064 crore. This takes the total ESOP pool to nearly ₹5,000 crore, which is around 11.6% of the company’s fully diluted share capital. CRED has also announced its fifth ESOP buyback programme for employees.
The company’s ownership structure has also changed. Founder Kunal Shah is no longer listed as a promoter, although he continues to remain a shareholder.
Kunal Shah Joins Meta as WhatsApp Gets a New Leader
One of the biggest developments in the deal is the leadership change.
Kunal Shah has stepped down from his day-to-day role as CRED’s CEO and joined Meta as the Global Head of WhatsApp. He was reportedly hired by Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, and will move to the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
Shah takes over from Will Cathcart, who led WhatsApp for seven years and helped grow the platform to more than 3 billion monthly users. Cathcart will stay at Meta and work on consumer products powered by artificial intelligence.
At CRED, Miten Sampat, who has been leading the company’s finance and strategy teams since 2020, has been appointed interim CEO. The board is now reviewing the leadership structure as the company prepares for a possible IPO in the future.
Many industry experts believe Meta’s investment is about more than just money. Some analysts have described it as an “acquihire in disguise,” meaning Meta is mainly interested in bringing Kunal Shah’s experience into the company instead of fully acquiring CRED.
Meta has struggled to build a strong position in India’s digital payments market through WhatsApp Pay. Even though WhatsApp has hundreds of millions of users in India, its share in the UPI market remains much smaller than rivals like Google Pay and PhonePe.
By hiring Shah, Meta hopes to use his experience in building financial products for premium customers and strengthen WhatsApp’s plans to become a platform where users can chat, shop and manage financial services in one place.
CRED Reports Better Financial Performance but Privacy Questions Continue
CRED enters this partnership with stronger business numbers.
In FY25, the company’s operating revenue grew 16% to ₹2,735 crore. Its operating losses fell by 51% to ₹298 crore, while total losses reduced by 11.5% to ₹1,457 crore, showing that the company is improving its financial performance.
CRED now has around 1.7 crore members, while its monthly active paying users have increased to 1.26 crore. The number of transactions made by users has also grown significantly.
The platform currently handles more than 40% of all credit card bill payments in India. Its lending business has reached around ₹24,000 crore in managed assets under management (AUM), while its Total Payment Value (TPV) touched ₹8.5 lakh crore in FY25, a 23% increase from the previous year.
Earlier this year, CRED also received the Reserve Bank of India’s Payment Aggregator (PA) licence, allowing the company to directly onboard merchants without depending on third-party payment gateways.
Even with these achievements, the Meta deal has raised concerns about data privacy. Both Meta and Kunal Shah have said that Meta is only a passive minority investor, will not get a board seat, and will not have access to CRED’s customer data.
However, the announcement has led to concerns among some users, with many discussing financial data protection and possible misuse of customer information. Experts have also pointed to the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, RBI’s digital payment rules, and competition laws that regulators may closely watch as the partnership moves forward.
The investment gives CRED fresh funds to grow and helps Meta strengthen its long-term plans in India’s fintech market. At the same time, both companies will face close public and regulatory attention, making customer trust an important factor in the success of this partnership.