New Delhi, Mar 14 (IANS): Fintech platform BharatPe on Monday announced the launch of gold loan for its merchant partners, marking its foray into the secured loans category with an aim to disburse Rs 500 crore via the new loan offering by the end of 2022.

The company has partnered with RBI-approved non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) to offer gold loan of up to Rs 20 lakh.

Now available for merchants in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the gold loan offering will reach 20 cities by the end of this year.

"We have been able to facilitate disbursals of over Rs 3,000 crore to 3 lakh merchant partners. With Gold loan, we have ventured into the big-ticket, secured loan category," said Suhail Sameer, CEO, BharatPe.

"We facilitated disbursals of Rs 10 crore during the pilot phase and will be able to facilitate gold loan disbursals of Rs 500 crore by the end of the year," said Sameer.

BharatPe is facilitating gold loan at a competitive interest rate of 0.39 per month.

The merchants can take loans for a duration of six, nine and 12 months and have an option to repay the loan via easy daily instalments (EDI).

BharatPe said it will shortly launch the EMI option for repayment.

The fintech platform has been facilitating unsecured loans of up to Rs 7 lakh to offline merchants and kirana store owners.