Nowadays, it’s easy to pay the monthly bill of your credit card through apps. There’re various financial apps that provide such a facility.
And maybe you’re using one of these apps too for credit card repayments. The latest and perhaps the most advertised app among these is CRED.
While CRED is being widely advertised on TV and other media, let’s explore what this app is all about.
And is it worth using CRED at all or is it one of those fancy apps? Are there any benefits of using CRED? And what’re the various flipsides?
To help you better understand the CRED and how it works, read my honest CRED App review.
What is CRED App and How Does it Work?
When you download and register the CRED App on your smartphone, some of the first things it would do is to access your contact list and location.
That’s fine because most financial apps want that. However, to pay a credit card bill on CRED, you need to key in your credit card number and other sensitive details.
Whenever there’s a credit card bill, CRED alerts you. And you can pay the credit card bill using net banking or Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Once CRED receives your payment, it pays the bank or credit card issuing company. Generally, this is done within 24 hours to 48 hours.
You will get a confirmation from CRED as well as your bank that the credit card bill has been paid.
That affords you some peace of mind since delays in credit card repayments can mean stiff late fees and other problems such as blocking your credit card itself.
5 Benefits of Using CRED App
Now you might wonder, what’s the advantage of paying your credit card bill through CRED?
Actually, when you pay your credit card bills through CRED you get one CRED Coin, One CRED coin is worth Re.1.
You can collect these coins and once you have accumulated a significant number, you can claim some freebies from CRED.
CRED App offers freebies include discount vouchers from top stores both online and offline, which are promoting their products through the CRED app.
This helps you to save some money while shopping.
Additionally, you can also use these CRED coins for hard cash using their ‘Kill the Bill’ feature. Of course, you won’t get the cash in your hands.
Instead, you can use the cash back for paying your credit card bills.
You can pay for one or more credit cards using the CRED. However, you have to store all information about the credit card on the app.
Basically, you can get a cashback of Rs.10 for redeeming 1,000 CRED coins.
Then they also have certain promotions, during which you can get double the amount as cashback when you use the ‘Kill the Bill’ feature.
1. Paying Rent via CRED
The CRED app also has a feature known as Rent Pay. This allows you to pay your monthly rent with your credit card.
However, CRED charges you a fee of 1.5 percent of the rent amount as its service charges.
This feature also allows you to schedule rent payments. That means, it will alert you when the rent is due.
And you can opt to pay via CRED using your credit card.
2. Personal Loans via CRED
You can get instant loans of up to Rs.500,000 on the CRED app through its CRED Stash feature.
The interest rate they charge depends upon the creditworthiness of the borrower. However, they have a median interest rate of 12.5 percent per annum.
This is a non-secured loan meaning you don’t need to give any guarantors or collateral for availing it.
And the loan amount is usually credited to your bank account within 48 hours to 72 hours from the time of applying it, through the CRED app.
3. Credit Score Checks
You can also check your credit score from CRED. However, CRED doesn’t offer credit scores from CIBIL, which are widely accepted by banks and financial institutions in India.
Instead, you can get credit scores from the American company, Experian and CRIF only.
This means, your credit scores might not be valid for any loans in India. However, they do serve as a good indicator of your creditworthiness.
4. Expense Tracker
There’s an inbuilt expense tracker on CRED which you need to customize according to your needs.
That means, you’ll have to make various expense heads and allot a certain amount of budget under each head.
If you’re nearing or cross the budget for that specific expense head, you will get an alert from CRED. However, this feature only works for your credit card expenses.
Other expenses made in cash and debit cards or net banking don’t feature on this expense tracker.
5. Security Tracker
This CRED App review is incomplete without discussing the security factor. CRED has a security tracker.
This means, it will monitor your credit card for any suspicious activities and alert you if some transaction crosses the limit or budget that you fix.
It also tracks how much money you’re spending during the day and alerts you.
This can be a very useful feature in the unfortunate event of losing your credit card either inadvertently or due to pickpocketing or bag thefts.
That way you can contest the expense with your bank while reporting the loss of the credit card.
Flipsides of Using CRED
While the above are the plus points of using the CRED app, there’re several flip sides too.
You can weigh both these pros and cons before deciding whether or not to use CRED for your credit card repayments.
Privacy Issues
Privacy is the most important factor of this kind of apps related to finance and money. And I am sure that you have this question. Is CRED App safe to use?
Several financial experts and reviewers say that CRED comes with major privacy issues. For example, CRED requires you to store the full data of your credit card.
Additionally, you have to provide full access to CRED to read your emails, bank statements and credit card statements.
Experts aver that while CRED may be doing so to provide a service such as keeping tabs on your accounts and preventing misuse, any app is always prone to hacking.
In recent years, we’ve seen bank systems being hacked and debit card numbers and PINs being compromised by the million.
No Special Features
Other apps such as PhonePe and Paytm as well as apps of individual banks also have an inbuilt feature to pay for credit cards.
Therefore, the only plus point that CRED offers is the discounts on shopping, fine dining and travel.
However, these aren’t discounts that are really useful to a large segment of credit card users.
Additionally, PhonePe and Paytm also reward their users for paying credit card bills using their apps.
For example, Paytm gives you 1,000 points for paying a credit card bill worth Rs.2,500 and more for multiples of that amount.
And these points can also be redeemed for freebies. Therefore, the offer from CRED pales in comparison to Paytm, which offers more benefits.
Credit Ratings
Currently CRED only onboards credit card users that have a credit score of 750.
This means, most Indians that have taken any loan such as vehicle finance, housing finance or bought even an expensive mobile phone on credit, might not qualify to join CRED.
However, in such cases, CRED doesn’t outright refuse to onboard you.
Instead, it provides suggestions on how to improve your credit score and bring it to the 750 mark that it stipulates.
Now, this might not be possible for people that have taken long-term housing or vehicle finance and personal loans, among other credit.
My Honest Conclusion
I hope that you got a piece of information through this CRED App review. I won’t speak in or against the favor of CRED.
All that I’ve done is given my honest CRED App review about the various pros and cons of the app and the findings of financial experts.
Whether or not to use CRED is solely your decision. While CRED is a good app to own, there are others that are been in the market for a long and also offering credit card repayment services.
Therefore, you have to take the final call on using CRED or shunning it.