Redefining festive affordability for high-ticket spends
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, October 3, 2025: Fintech startup Kiwi, a pioneer in Credit on UPI, today announced the launch of India’s first Interest-Back EMI on UPI. Timed with the upcoming Diwali season, this innovation allows consumers to split big-ticket purchases into easy instalments and earn back the interest paid as cashback, making festive shopping more affordable and rewarding.
Festivals in India are synonymous with high-value shopping across categories such as gold, gadgets, home appliances, travel and home refurbishments. In 2024, overall festive spending in India crossed Rs3.5 lakh crore, with e-commerce alone contributing nearly Rs90,000 crore during Diwali week. Categories like smartphones, jewellery, appliances and travel see 2–3x growth during this period compared to non-festive months, and more than half of these big-ticket purchases are made using EMI or pay-later options. While EMIs have helped consumers manage affordability, the additional interest cost has always been a drawback. Kiwi’s Interest-Back EMI directly addresses this by refunding the interest paid—partially or fully—as instant cashback, making purchases significantly more consumer-friendly.
With this feature, a 3-month EMI comes with 100% cashback on interest, making it effectively interest-free, while 6 and 9-month EMIs offer 50% cashback on interest. Customers can pay at any UPI merchant by simply scanning a QR or making an online payment, select “Pay with EMI” in the Kiwi app, view charges upfront, authenticate with their UPI PIN, and instantly receive cashback on the interest portion. This eliminates the need for a physical card, ensures transparency, and delivers a fully mobile-first experience.
EMI on UPI becomes a key enabler by expanding affordability to millions of Indians who were earlier restricted to credit card-based EMI options. UPI today reaches more than 40 million merchants across India, from metros to smaller towns, but has largely been associated with low-value daily spends. By bringing EMIs onto UPI, Kiwi is unlocking affordability at scale and enabling structured credit access for first-time credit users as well as seasoned shoppers. This marks a major shift, taking UPI from everyday convenience into the domain of high-ticket transactions.
Mohit Bedi, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer, Kiwi, said: “Festivals in India mean high-value shopping—whether it is gold, gadgets or home refurbishments. EMI on UPI brings together the convenience of UPI and the flexibility of credit. With Interest-Back EMIs, we are ensuring that consumers can celebrate without financial strain. UPI has so far been about everyday convenience—chai, cab rides, daily essentials. With this launch, UPI steps into big-ticket affordability, an area once dominated by credit cards. Backed by NPCI’s framework, we see this as the next evolution in digital credit: simple, inclusive and accessible to millions.”
Kiwi has already issued more than 2 lakh RuPay Credit Cards, and with this launch it is taking a significant step in making digital credit inclusive, transparent and rewarding for Indian consumers. As UPI adoption continues to accelerate, Interest-Back EMI on UPI is poised to become the smarter way to fulfil festive aspirations across the country.
About Kiwi
Kiwi (Gokiwi Tech Pvt. Ltd., a recently launched fintech startup, is revolutionising the credit card landscape in India by harnessing the power of “Credit on UPI” a recently introduced feature by NPCI. As a certified entity, Kiwi is the first app in India to offer customers the opportunity to experience Credit on UPI on; through its partnership with banks to issue RuPay Cards. With over 2L+ RuPay Credit Cards issued on Kiwi within 2 yrs, company aims to disrupt the credit card industry by becoming the leading issuer of RuPay Credit Cards by 2026.
