BENGALURU: South Africa’s Naspers ’ fintech unit — PayU — has acquired a majority stake in online credit platform PaySense in an all-cash deal at a valuation of $185 million (Rs 1,312 crore). As part of this deal, PayU will merge its in-house digital consumer credit platform LazyPay with PaySense, the company said. PayU will own about 80% stake in the merged entity, which is being valued at upwards of $300 million (Rs 2,127 crore).Additionally, PayU has committed an investment of another $200 million (Rs 1,419 crore) into the merged entity, of which $65 million (Rs 461 crore) is being invested immediately. The rest of the capital would come in the next two years based on the company’s performance.PaySense co-founder Prashanth Ranganathan will head the credit business and continue to hold a stake in the merged entity. PaySense’s financial investors like Jungle Ventures and Nexus Partners will exit the entity after the transaction, which will result in a broader play in the digital lending space by PayU.While LazyPay has about a million monthly active users on its platform, PaySense has disbursed loans worth Rs 1,000 crore in the last 2.5 years. LazyPay largely offered buy-now-pay-later financing options across online platforms, PaySense offers consumer loans, vehicle loans.Siddhartha Jajodia, global head of credit, PayU, said this merger will enable PayU to offer full-stack credit solutions. “What this does is it really sets the stage for a combined entity that has all the basic components, all the capabilities, the digital lending stack, the data analytics platform, the ability to acquire customers and now the funding and liquidity power,” he said.This is aligned with PayU’s broader strategy for financial services in India. Recently, the company invested in online wealth management platform Fisdom while it also acquired Wibmo last year.Ranganathan said PaySense lends about Rs 100 crore a month now and has a non-performing asset ratio of just under 4%. “We have been very prudent about who we lend to and how much we lend to them. While it’s important to grow our loan book, we have been careful about how responsibly we lend to consumers. Our recovery has gotten better over time. We are almost operating at bank industry level now,” he added.