Kunal Shah’s CRED has spent $180 million to acquire Happay, a corporate expense manager for Byju’s, OYO and more

• The acquisition will allow CRED to enter the enterprise spending space.
• Professional expense management was a natural proposition for CRED, says CEO Kunal Shah.
• Happay manages work-related expenses for over 1 million users globally with approximately $1 billion in annual spends.

Kunal Shah-led credit cards payment company CRED will be acquiring corporate expense company Happay for a cash and stock deal worth $180 million.

The acquisition will allow CRED to enter the enterprise spending space. “While Happay will operate as a separate entity, the team will work closely with CRED leadership to leverage its ecosystem, build distribution, expand the product offering and drive scale,” CRED said in a press note.

Shah, in the media statement, added that CRED has been able to grow rapidly in the last three years by solving the pain of credit card management. He added that now, professional expense management was a natural proposition for the company.

Founded in 2012 by Varun Rathi and Anshul Rai, Happay is a business expense, payments and travel management platform serving over 6,000 businesses. It manages work-related expenses for over 1 million users globally with approximately $1 billion in annual spends.

The company creates 3 million expense reports annually and counts TATA Grow, PwC, Maruti, OYO, Byjus and hundreds of larger enterprises as its customers.

“Happay software stack and in-house payment engine, along with its ease of use, will complement the card management experience that CRED members enjoy for their personal expenses. It is the only unified platform that automates the spend management workflow, a trend that is set to explode in a contactless, paperless world, while ensuring compliance and visibility with an end-to-end audit trail,” the company said.

In October 2021, CRED had acquired alcohol delivery startup HipBar in order to foray into the wallet payments business with the prepaid payment instrument licence held by the company.

Though the details of the transactions are still unknown, Kunal Shah reportedly joined as the director of Hipbar post this acquisition.

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