Karur Vysya Bank eyes Rs 2,000 crore personal loan book via Axio

Karur Vysya Bank (KVB) plans to grow its personal loan book to Rs 1,500-2,000 crore through its partnership with digital lending platform Axio and Amazon's buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) customer base. Managing director B Ramesh Babu said the bank's BNPL portfolio, which previously reached around Rs 1,200 crore, currently stands at about Rs 700 crore.

KVB has built around 90 lakh customers through the BNPL arrangement, which the bank sees as a base for offering personal loans and credit cards. Amazon's acquisition of Axio has temporarily slowed the partnership's scaling, but Babu expects the transition to be completed in about three months, after which the bank will engage with Amazon on the next phase.

The bank also plans to use repayment histories of existing BNPL customers to offer them direct personal loans and credit cards. Babu said even 1-2% of the customer base getting credit cards could add around two lakh customers. KVB has also integrated with the Reserve Bank-backed Unified Lending Interface (ULI), aiming to run a lending product end-to-end on the platform within three months.