Product Pitch

Elevator Pitch

In 2020 when I started working, I got my first credit card. For the first time in my life I came across what reward points are. Later I realised I can even get rewarded for paying my credit card bills! Though I know if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. But what IF I’M PAID, WHAT WOULD I SAY? I SAY GIVE ME MONEY, TAKE WHAT YOU WANT!!

Sooner it became a monthly habit to pay bill, ka-ching, monies in. But then slowly started experiencing friction. Friction to get the money I deserve. Money I deserve, seriously? Oh yes. That’s the norm. Issa mah monies.

Don’t worry! No need to amassing lakhs of coins of which the only good thing which you felt was donating Oxygen which only Lord Vayu 💨 knows where they went.

Presenting CheQ - Easy Repayments, Real Rewards. Read it again, REAL REWARDS!!

No more wasting your time and feeling like gambling to get the reward you are ought to. Simple, straight, no smoke, real rewards.

Sign-up on CheQ, pay the bills, get the CheQ coins, redeem on your favourite platform or simply convert them to cash now! www.cheq.one

About CheQ

Selection Framework

Value Proposition

1. Easy rewards : Flat 1% back as CheQ coins on every payment
2. Easy reward conversion : Get 1:1 vouchers of choice from a wide variety selection like Swiggy, BookMyShow, Amazon, Flipkart or simply convert at the ratio of 4:1 for rupees for next payment
3. Pay Together : Pay all the bills in one single click and payment. No hassle of doing the entire payment flow from selecting the card to choosing the method to payment confirmation.
4. Credit Health Report : Dive deep with a free, detailed credit report. Understand your credit standing and get actionable insights.
5. Automatic Payment Reminders : No more missed due dates. Automatic reminders with real-time updates on due amounts ensure timely payments.

Let’s talk where we are and what we are facing

• Context on credit cards in India as of Q3, 2023
• • Since 2016, UPI has become the de facto digital payments channel, but India’s credit card market has also grown exponentially in that time frame.
  • Although the primary narrative around credit cards in India is focussed on under-penetration, the fact is that credit card usage has somehow outpaced debit card transactions in the past couple of months.
  • India currently has over 86 Mn issued credit cards — more than 10 Mn have been added in the past year and the number of CCs has more than doubled since 2020. Credit card usage has jumped 20% in April 2023 compared to last year, while debit card usage has dropped by 31% in the same time period. Of the primary reason for this surge is not that people have gotten into the habit of taking loans or the sudden need of getting an early salary. It is the rewards game and the bank offers which have came into highlight.
• Why an increase in CC?
• • According to Zee Business Research, in August 2023, 9.13 crore credit cards were used as against 8.9 crore in July, which implies an increase of 2.5 per cent.
  • Among banks, American Express credit card spending increased by 10.1 per cent MoM while SBI Card's spending rose by 6 per cent. Kotak Mahindra Bank's spending increased by 4.5 per cent, YES Bank by 3.6 per cent, ICICI Bank by 3 per cent and Axis Bank by 0.5 per cent.
  • Interestingly, the usage of cards have actually surpassed the total issued cards, implying there are a good percentage of people holding more than 1 credit card!
  • And with UPI linking of RuPay credit cards, almost every bank is offering LTF RuPay CC as well along with what people already have. This is currently getting offered in limit sharing but shows to have equal and separate limit in credit reports.
• Are credit cards really used for credit?
• • Essentially, with people realising the benefits of smartly holding credit cards, with one card getting better offers on one platform and with other card on competitor platform, people are now comfortably holding more than 1 card. Credit cards are slowly moving from a lending tool to a reward tool.
  • And having to manage multiple cards and paying individually every month and tracking spends (finfluencers have been saying to not cross 30% per card), resorting to the individual bank apps is the last resort.
• Why CheQ?
• • That’s where CheQ fits in. With CheQ, one gets the feature of Pay Together which allows one single payment to multiple credit cards. CheQ has a very straightforward reminder system that ensures you don’t miss paying a bill. These sanity features comes with added simple and direct reward structure. Let’s talk about the reward structure
  • Every card holder now understands the power of rewards, be it Magnus offering as high as 50% rewards (devalue kr diya 😭) or Infinia staying the baap of all for years. CheQ offering direct 1% rewards which can be converted to brand vouchers one would use daily or to ditch the hassle, just convert to cash is something which stands apart for real.

Ideal Customer Profiles

Define ICP

Connected to 10 users of CheQ. Few were from GrowthX, few from my circle outside. Instead of asking them to fill the form, I filled it on their behalf as we talked.

The users ranged from power users of CheQ to people who ditched CheQ in the early days of their adoption.

Below are the 4 key ICPs defined basis the calls I had in the last 2 days. As the sheet had red data (couldn’t get better term to define after working in compliance at Amazon!), so decided not to surface that.

ICP Prioritisation

Final ICP Selection

Prioritised based on the following:

1. Ease of Adoption - Should be early adopters
2. High-Frequency Usage - Should have a regular usage frequency (paying monthly bills)
3. Appetite to Pay - Should have both the willingness and appetite to pay
4. Sizable TAM - Should be large enough / growing TAM (focus is on growing as the credit card market is growing at a scale of 20% CAGR. Source
5. Distribution Potential - Should be easy to distribute

Based on the framework, we will go ahead with ICP 2 and 3, 1% club and Hustling in Tier-1. They are the ones who would be early adopters, getting their AHA moment when they see direct reward conversion and something not depending on luck every time they pay the bills. Also to ICP-2, the pay together feature will act as a AHA moment.

Though ICP-1 has great appetite to pay and also a very valid use-case, due to small TAM (only 2L Indians roughly fall in the category of high spenders as per the RBI report), also with LOW potential of distribution, we are not prioritising ICP-1 (Industrialist). For ICP-4, though they have valid use case of pay-together, redemption options varying and useful basis the spends, the awareness falls medium to limited access to peers and WOM as well for channels like referrals. Hence, keeping them as a secondary ICP. Also they are not much willing to experiment on different platforms as then they have to move all the cards. Plus they prefer auto-debit as they have multiple active cards every month.

For ICP 2 and 3, as we have seen the market is growing by 20% every year (source attached above), TAM is growing as well.

In a nutshell, Indians who are

1. Salaried having salaries of 50K+
2. Aged between 24 to 38
3. Having minimum one credit card
4. With spends on credit card range of 20K to 3L monthly

are the ideal customers. Cherry on going bottom from this would be the set of customers having more than 1 credit card and who are inclined to reward points to get the right credit card. Read the TAM calculation below to get some surprises 😉

Understanding the Market

Data Dump

• India’s population = 140 crores
• Unique credit card holders = 4 crores (Source)
• Total credit cards issued as of Q3, 2023 = 10 crores (Source)
• Total credit card issued to holders in the age group of 24 to 38 = 80% of total credit card holders = 8 crores (Source : CRIF High Mark)
• Age group of Indians who value rewards as the primary criteria = 24 to 40 years (Source : SSRN Research Paper)
• Number of cards issued because of reward structure rewards while choosing the credit card = 70% cards = 7 crores (Source : SSRN Research Paper)

TAM/SAM/SOM Calculation

Total Addressable Market

Every person who has a credit card has to pay the credit card bill. Hence, the TAM comes to be 4 Cr Indians. Of which of the age group of 24 to 48, we have about 3 crore Indians. Hence, our target audience is of 4 crore Indians holding over 10 crore credit cards. Scope to scale for us is also that of by easy increase by 20% basis the trend that we have seen.

Serviceable Addressable Market

As for CheQ, we are targeting Indians who really value rewards and wants to either save max money or wants to get the lifestyle benefits. Also the age range for our ICPs is 24 to 38, this number comes down to just south of 3 crores. Hence we can service about 3 crores Indians.

Serviceable Obtainable Market

For CheQ, the hero feature is the direct calculative reward structure, easy to redeem partner offers and the pay together feature. People who value reward structure actually falls in this category whom we can target. As per the data, 70% of the total credit cards issued are because of their reward structure only. Also the age group of 24 to 38 is the one which has 90% optimal usage of the reward structure and benefits. Hence, we can serve SAM x Rewards Evangelist = 3cr x 90% = 2.7 crores Indians. Again this number is increasing at the rate of 20% minimum year on year.

As per multiple sources, the prime reason of credit card issuance increase is attributed to better rewards, partner offers and benefits.

Acquisition Strategy

Some stats

Taking a look at the CheQ’s and CRED (the major competitor) reviews on Play Store and App Store, below are the ratings

What data speaks out loud

Even though the traffic on the app is way less than (100X lesser) than what CRED has, we see that the ratings too are significantly low. CRED has built that trust and confidence which is essential in the fintech space.

Though CheQ has features like pay-together and assured rewards with easy calculation, CheQ hasn’t been able to execute it well. That is clearly evident from the feedback on both the stores. And yes, it will take them time to get to that level of product.

Channel Prioritisation

Below is the matrix to compare different channels for acquisition. We need to keep in mind the added factor of trust that is yet to be developed by CheQ, no matter how valuable the offerings are.

As we have seen that even though the App has decent rating of 4+, with lakhs of reviews, there is still a negative sentiment. People can never go wrong with their credit card repayments. And with the major major competitor like CRED in the market, they have a deadly competition in place. It is only the direct reward and pay-together that has been acting as an safety net, but the poor execution of tech and interface has caused trust issues among folks.

Hence, we should go ahead with channels which can help build trust among the public. Through lucrative referrals which allows cashing in and product integrations with old (big banks like Axis, HDFC, SBI) and new age banks (Neobanks) can help faster discovery and building the trust factor among the potential users.

Going with paid ads wouldn’t make sense as the public image isn’t that very attractive, given the feedback on the app stores. Due to RBI restricting finfluencers, current is not the best time to leverage their reach as people don’t have that level of trust on such folks now.

Also the ICPs we are targeting are the ones who are active in their research, value better rewards and are in for taking risks.

Channel 1 : Referrals

Lets first look at how referrals currently work for CheQ. Basis that we’ll get more clarity what they can do to improve how the referrals might perform. We’ll then see how we can gamify it by leveraging the existing value propositions.

Deep dive on current referral flow of CheQ

1. User opens the app. Right on the page, it asks for referral with a lucrative offer of getting ₹200 Amazon voucher. If I scroll down a bit, it also says that I can get extra 100 CheQ coins as well!

2. On clicking the button, it directly shows the How it Works.

3. On clicking refer now, it takes me to the referral section of the app

4. On clicking INVITE YOUR FRIEND, it takes me to WhatsApp

5. Referral center

6. Placement on reward redemption section

• What might be working for CheQ
• 1. The Amazon voucher of ₹200 is lucrative
  2. The reward centre showing whom I referred is somewhat a way to gamify it
  3. They have placement of the banner on the reward section as well. Looking at my coins and feeling confident that I can redeem them well might prompt me to refer as well
• What might not be working for CheQ
• 1. Seeing 2 different messages and that too on the same screen causes confusion. The bigger banner below also says that I’d get 100 CheQ coins. But what really is true? Is it the coins and voucher, or just voucher? Or are they two different links.
  2. On going to the second step of pressing the refer button, it has a whole different process which emphasises on the coins rather than the voucher. This clearly demotivates me to even try!
  3. The reward centre just says that the person referred but did it really convert? There is no info about that. There is a major scope of gamification here.
  4. The message says that I paid the bill. We know that if we give free voucher, people land up on the app even without really using it. Instead if they had just said that I pay my bill and manage my cards, that would have been more realistic.
  5. Through any screen, be it home, rewards, referral centre, the message is same.
  6. By giving Amazon voucher, they are cashing out instead they should be cashing in. They are now charging their processing fee, offer cash as rewards on conversion, might as well leverage those as a way to cash in. The user using the product (who will be the one referring) will definitely value it all.

Proposed referral design system for CheQ

The Framework

• • Brag-worthy product features
  • • Pay together multiple cards, redeem rewards for everyday brands like Swiggy, Amazon or convert to direct cash.For each of the individual props, we should have custom messages for the user.
  • Discovery of the referral
  • • Current app landing
    • On paying the credit card bill
    • On redeeming the rewards when the voucher is generated
  • Referral Tracker
  • • They already have a referral centre to track the referrals
    • To show the stage where the referred user is in the journey
    • Adding nudges at different stages. For a new user, the journey will be Signup → Add card → Pay the bill. The user can nudged if they haven’t added their card yet. Same at every stage.
    • Also they should show the user when their referral is expiring. As we don’t want to reward up until they use the core value prop. Like currently they want the user to pay a bill of minimum of ₹100
    • The tracker should also have the monthly snapshot of the referrals done and should nudge the customer to do more. Check how we are gamifying the referrals below in the strategy
  • Platform currency

  Motivation	Currency
  Money	Vouchers
  Access	- Waive off processing fees - Better value on coins - Better conversion to cash
  Fame	NA
  Dopamine	Earning coins by referring

Referral Strategy

• We should be targeting money and access as the two motivations for the referral.
• For access, we can leverage
• • the waive off on processing fee. On a month basis, this can save upto 200 rupees if the user pays credit card bills of upto 50k twice.
  • reward multiplier. As CheQ has brand partnerships with everyday brands like Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon, BookMyShow, this is always a lucrative benefit for a user to refer if they get this added bonus.
• For money, we can resort to brand vouchers.

We will be leveraging both. Plan is to gamify the process.

• For every ‘n’ referrals in a month
• • 1. 1 referral → Waive off on processing fee for 30 days with 100 coins
    2. 2 referrals → 4X the coins on bill payment for 30 days and waive off on processing fee extends for 30 days
    3. 3 referrals → Get Amazon voucher of ₹200, 4X and waive off on processing fee extends by 30 days
  • The Math
  • • As we know that the current users of CheQ values reward systems and understands why CheQ is rewarding, they will find this lucrative. Getting a waive off on processing fee, rules out CRED as an option as they can now pay together and also it is then charging the same as CRED which is ₹0.With the 4X coins, they can do easy math of 1% straight cash-back.As average credit card user spends around 15k/month (source : Business Insider), a person referring three users would cost CheQ at max 30+150+200 = ₹380 and they are getting three referrals!
    • For the person getting referred,
    • • they would be getting 4X the coins back on the first payment. With the math done by their evangelist friend, they would be well aware of what 4X might mean. This will also motivate the potential user to make bigger payments or pay multiple cards together. As a first time sign-up bonus, the processing fee maybe be waived off as well.
      • On realising how helpful is pay-together and how straight-forward are the coins to rupees conversion, the user actually might stay.

Channel 2 : Product Integration

Product Integration intent

As we have understood so far, CheQ is competing with CRED in the credit card repayment space. CRED with its years of establishment in the market, with a strong founder’s brand, bold UI, fast processing, flawless execution, has built a level of trust which is now like a benchmark for all the apps in competition.

Hence, to reach and acquire more customers, we are targeting individuals who are more tech savvy, keeps a tab on what’s happening in the market, finds ways to save money or simply, get the best out for their lifestyle.

To leverage the rewarding lifestyle users aspire and finding easy ways to save money, we are planning two integrations.

1. Integrating with money saving apps like Jar, Gullak for gold, investments in stocks for the change. For now we’ll take Jar in this example.
2. Integrating with Neobanks to promote their savings account and credit cards. For now we’ll take Niyo. They have both the offerings. We can even cross sell both with both the products

Product Integration with Jar

With Jar as a user can invest with as low as ₹10, we will be leveraging the 1% points back that the user gets as CheQ coins.

We’ll be doing a deep API integration of Jar with CheQ to allow auto-savings in Jar app of the CheQ coins they get.

As the user knows the number of coins they are gonna get, it is an easy way to save the extra change.

The same can be gamified as well to maintain a streak month over month.

User journey

One time setup prompt

Customer selects a credit card → Enters the amount → Pays the bill → Sees the rewards → Gets a banner to connect with jar to auto-save

Through this integration, Jar will be prompting their 9M+ users to pay their bills using CheQ to auto-save on Jar for free!!

Product Integration with Niyo

Neobanks are competing with major bank apps like Axis, HDFC, ICICI and SBI who own almost 90% of the banking market. Different ways in which neobanks are acting lucrative is the new-age interface of banking apps, better FDs, 0 forex, better rewards on debit cards, quick onboarding (some can onboard in like a few mins), somewhat dopamine triggering by offering custom beautiful debit cards.

These banks needs customers, CheQ needs customers. If both join hands, they can actually drive traffic either-way.

Product Integration can happen in two major buckets

1. Partner credit cards
2. Partner savings account

Lets talk Niyo. Niyo currently has over 6M users (Source : LinkedIn of Niyo).

Niyo offers both a credit card and a debit card. We’ll be leveraging CheQ’s

1. Processing fee waiver
2. CheQ coins

as the two benefits.

For savings account,

we’ll be offering benefits on both the platforms

1. On CheQ → We’ll offer 100% waiver on processing fee if Niyo’s debit card is used.
2. On Niyo → We’ll offer 4X rewards on the Niyo app

We won’t just be prompting the user to use the debit card, but also make it faster and smoother for the customer open the bank account if they don’t have one. There will be a data sharing contract between CheQ and Niyo approved on consent by the user on prompt.

For credit card,

we’ll be offering 4X coins on CheQ. Simple, straight. This converts to direct 1% cashback minimum.

We can even club both of them to offer

Pay the Niyo credit card bill using the Niyo debit card and get

1. On CheQ →
2. 1. Processing fee waiver
   2. 4X coins on CheQ
3. On Niyo →
4. 1. 4X rewards in Niyo savings account

These two strategies will actually promote people to use CheQ when it comes to either of the offerings Niyo has. In turn, will also cross sell either of the savings account and credit card. Same will help CheQ as Niyo would be showing it as an offer on their platform.

This sounds like co-marketing but it actually is an integration for the long term as it will help both the platforms to provide seamless integration.

This will also not require much API integration as the Niyo platform knows how much bill has been paid of the Niyo credit card.

Some screenshots of the offers

We are prompting the user to open the account then and there in above mockup. In the below we are highlighting the benefit.

This can further be expanded to API integration to integrate features and offers for extra benefits basis the spending pattern etc.

Keep spending, keep earning folks!!

Apparently this is my wishlist as well :p