eNews
Flipkart bets big on its commerce advertising platform for retail and non-retail brands
MUMBAI: Flipkart, which claims to be India’s largest e-commerce firm, today went live with its Brand Story Ads on the mobile app with over 50 leading brands on board.
Brands including Yes Bank, L’Oréal, Micromax, Intel, Gillette, Datsun and Sony have already signed up on the platform to launch their ad campaigns.
Flipkart SVP Ravi Garikipati said that with Brand Story Ads, FlipKart is “offering a platform where the brands can target and engage with largest qualified commerce audience in the country at the right time for the right intent. Thus, the propensity to click on the advertisement is only higher and stronger. The magnitude of consumer traffic and intelligent data insights on online shopping behaviour gives Flipkart the edge to provide larger reach, impact and measurability.”
Brand Story Ads is a native, interactive story format with content images and product guides that enables brands to tell their stories in a crisp and impactful manner. In the initial phase, the campaigns will focus on awareness creation with brand story and category pages. This will later be extended to product listings, checkouts and other areas.
Along with the brands that retail on Flipkart (first party brands), this service will also be available to other non-retailing brands (third party brands) in sectors like real estate, FMCG, BFSI, auto, and telecom etc.
With the launch of Brand Story Ads, Flipkart has introduced a new form of advertising that it calls ‘Commerce Advertising’, delivering a holistic view of consumer’s purchase journey post ad interactions and highlights effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. Flipkart promises a universal solution to brands that is based on superior data and buying intent of 50 million+ consumers.
eNews
PNB partners Kiwi to launch credit-enabled UPI for users
Targets 180 million customers; RuPay card offers 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent cashback
MUMBAI: Swipe, tap, or scan credit is quietly slipping into the rhythm of everyday payments, and Punjab National Bank wants in on the action. The state-run lender has partnered with Kiwi to roll out credit-enabled UPI payments for its 180 million customers, marking a significant push to blend traditional banking with India’s fast-evolving digital payments ecosystem.
At the centre of the collaboration is the launch of the PNB Kiwi Credit Card on the RuPay network. The card is designed with a digital-first approach, offering fully online onboarding and seamless integration with UPI, allowing users to transact via scan-and-pay while accessing credit.
The offering also brings in a rewards layer, with cashback ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent on online transactions, positioning the product as both a convenience play and a spending incentive.
The move comes as UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payments landscape, increasingly blurring the lines between debit-led transactions and credit access. For PNB, which operates over 10,000 branches around 60 per cent in semi-urban and rural areas, the partnership signals a targeted effort to extend formal credit to segments that have traditionally remained underserved.
The collaboration also reflects a broader industry shift, where banks and fintech platforms are converging to embed credit directly into payment flows, reducing friction while expanding access.
With RuPay credit cards gaining traction and UPI evolving beyond peer-to-peer transfers, the PNB–Kiwi tie-up positions both players at the intersection of scale, accessibility, and the next phase of digital finance in India.
