The number of credit vellum users in India has surged in recent years thanks to the many perks and benefits a credit vellum offers. As the credit market grew, individuals began to own increasingly than one credit card, which led to a new problem – managing the billing cycles of all these cards. This problem remained untouched until 2018 when a visitor tabbed CRED came on the scene and revolutionized and plane glamorized the concept of credit vellum snout payments in India.
Since its launch, CRED has been the market leader in its segment, with scrutinizingly negligible competition from other major snout payment apps like Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay. The equation is waffly a bit today, as a new player tabbed ‘CheQ‘ has decided to compete directly with CRED while trying to sally as a unique solution for paying your credit vellum bills.
Here is a detailed comparison between CRED and CheQ that will help you find the weightier option for your credit vellum payments.
Before we compare CRED and CheQ, it is important to understand why the concept of a standalone app for credit vellum snout payments exists. Before 2018, the only way to pay credit vellum bills was to pay them through the bank’s internet financial portal, mobile app, or by physically visiting the branch. While this was easy for someone with one or two credit cards, for a person with increasingly than three cards, this system meant total chaos. The variegated billing cycles and payments through variegated portals meant only one thing – inconvenience.
Despite this massive problem, the major payment apps Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay did not plane offer the option to pay credit vellum bills. PhonePe introduced credit vellum snout payments in January 2018, while Paytm did so in September 2018, while Google Pay took plane longer when they launched their service for the same in May 2019. These apps did offer the option to pay credit vellum bills, but it was just a simple solution. It did not write the real problem – managing the billing cycles of multiple cards.
This is where CRED won the game. When it launched in April 2018, the visitor promoted itself as the easiest way to manage all credit cards and their billing cycles in one place. And that too only for people with very good credit scores (more on that later). CRED ripened a unique solution where the app could pull your credit vellum statements from your emails and text messages. In this way, the app would collect details such as the total value due, the minimum value due, and the due stage of all your cards and provide you with a dashboard of all your credit cards.
CRED’s solution was creative, innovative, and unique. Their product was certainly sunny for the Indian market, but that’s not why they gained their popularity. CRED gained the most sustentation through its quirky commercials, portraying itself as a completely variegated genre and somehow connecting that to paying credit vellum bills at the end of the commercial. Their biggest razzmatazz wayfarers was in the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2020, where they increased their consumer wiring by 700% in two months.
CRED is one of the weightier SaaS ripened in India and has set an example to the world in identifying a problem and finding a creative solution. In fact, we have not had a standalone competitor since CRED was launched five years ago. A competitor to CRED was long overdue, and a CRED competitor had wilt necessary in recent months. But why?
At the time of CRED’s launch, everyone was excited well-nigh the app’s trappy design. It was visually well-flavored and easy to navigate, and the unshortened app was unmistakably laid out. The diamond of the app was one of the main reasons for using CRED. But what started out as a special full-length has now wilt an tormentor for most CRED users – the design!
CRED’s long-term vision was unquestionably to create an sectional club of users with upper credit scores to make them finger like they belonged to a special group. In this attempt, CRED has overloaded the app with so many options that it has wilt very difficult to navigate the app. While we understand that these changes were part of merchantry decisions to make profits, these changes were not welcomed by the majority of CRED users.
CRED changes its app’s user interface commonly so that every month when you unshut the app to pay your bill, you see new options, menus, and a completely variegated UI. The Chief Diamond Officer of CRED, Harish Sivaramakrishnan, has openly admitted that they do this on purpose considering they want users to navigate the app as much as possible. In this way, CRED is trying to get users to squint at their store, trademark partners, and other options.
The recreate of the CRED app was that you could unshut the app, view your credit vellum snout and pay with a single click. That has completely disappeared with recent updates requiring a new credit vellum snout payment solution. And so, in recent months, a competitor for CRED has wilt necessary.
CheQ is a credit management platform that lets you pay all your credit vellum bills in one place, with a guaranteed 1% reward on every transaction in the form of CheQ chips. These coins can be redeemed for mazuma or branded vouchers from Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, and many others. The concept is very similar to CRED, with a very familiar reward system like CRED coins. But the zone where CheQ makes a big difference to CRED is the transparency in the app diamond and the reward point system. This is where the ultimate comparison begins.
Getting started with both CRED and CheQ is easy and requires minimal documentation. All you need is your PAN number, your mobile number, and your email address. CRED has an eligibility requirement that your Experian Score must be whilom 750 to join CRED. Otherwise, you will not be worldly-wise to create an worth with CRED. Your CRED worth will be zingy immediately without registration if you meet this criterion.
CheQ’s onboarding process is equally smooth, and they do not have any eligibility criteria based on your credit score. Anyone with a valid PAN vellum can get started with CheQ. The registration process takes less than a minute, and you are ready to pay your credit vellum bills. CheQ had unquestionably started with a waitlist system during its launch on 14th February, but they have now opened wangle to everyone in less than a week.
The CRED app looks much increasingly visually well-flavored and futuristic with its user interface. The diamond of the app includes a lot of animations, and the app looks very lively. But unfortunately, that’s where the problems start.
A few weeks ago, the home screen of the CRED app directly displayed all the saved credit cards and the amounts on them. But as of today, the home screen shows a huge woodcut that serves as a imprint for the ongoing offers with partner brands.
On the other hand, CheQ has a nifty user interface that is beginner-friendly. The CheQ app’s welcome screen shows you the total value due for all your credit cards and lists each of your cards’ outstanding balances separately. So as soon as you unshut the app, you’ll get a well-spoken idea of your current total debt.
While CRED is no longer just a credit vellum snout payment service, it moreover offers you the option to pay regular bills such as mobile recharge, DTH, electricity, and increasingly with CRED Pay. There are too many options in the app when you compare the very number of features that the app offers. CheQ is currently limited to credit vellum snout payments only and hence has only three menus in the app – Home, Pay, and Rewards.
CRED and CheQ are on completely opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to the verisimilitude of the app. CRED is only misogynist in visionless mode, where the unshortened app preliminaries is pitch black. CheQ, on the other hand, is only misogynist in light mode, where the preliminaries verisimilitude of the unshortened app is white. In both apps, there is no option to switch between light and visionless themes.
When it comes to navigation within the app, CheQ unmistakably wins the race with its simplicity. One could oppose that CRED offers spare features like snout payment that make the app seem cluttered. However, in our experience, CRED had a much largest user interface in the past that was easier to navigate than the current version. CheQ is superiority of the game here.
While CRED began as a standalone credit vellum snout payment service, today, the visitor has expanded its services to include snout payments, reloads, UPI payments, credit vellum rental payments, CRED Mint for P2P lending, and more. There is moreover a defended store where users can buy lifestyle products such as fashion, electronics, and plane supplies and beverage. One can moreover typesetting domestic and international trips through the Travel section.
The CheQ app currently only supports credit vellum snout payments. It moreover shows your Experian Score on the homepage. Beyond that, CheQ does not offer any other services. But then, that’s how CRED started too!
However, the CheQ app has a full-length that allows you to delete your CheQ worth with a single click permanently. If you want to delete your CRED account, the process is not so simple, as CRED requires you to contact consumer service via in-app support, as there is no one-click method to delete your CRED account.
It is important to note that the one-click worth deletion option in CheQ is only misogynist in the iOS app. This option is not currently misogynist in the Android app.
The CheQ app has the major disadvantage that you can not delete a credit vellum without you have widow it to the app. CRED, on the other hand, lets you seamlessly remove and delete any credit vellum from your account. However, this is not yet possible with CheQ.
In terms of features, CRED is definitely superior to CheQ as it offers many value-added services at the expense of a cluttered user interface. Otherwise, both CRED and CheQ have everything you need to unzip the main goal: paying credit vellum bills.
CRED’s reward system includes CRED coins that are credited to your CRED worth based on your invoice amount. For example, for every Rs.1 you pay on your credit vellum bill, you will receive 1 CRED coin. You can use these CRED coins to collect coupons for partner brands within the CRED app. The downside is that most of the partner brands are either startups or lesser-known companies that you may have never heard of. Remember that this is the only way to use your CRED coins, as they cannot be redeemed for cash.
However, CRED does offer cashback in small amounts for any credit vellum payment over Rs. 1000. Once you well-constructed the payment, you will receive five self-ruling spins, where you will usually receive Rs.1 to Rs.5 cashback. This value is saved in your CRED worth as CRED mazuma and can be used in your next snout payment.
CheQ’s reward scheme is much increasingly lulu as it offers guaranteed 1% cashback in the form of CheQ chips. For every Rs. 100 you pay on CheQ towards your credit vellum bill, you will receive 1 Cheq Chip. These CheQ fries are much increasingly valuable in uncontrived comparison with CRED coins.
CheQ fries can be used to redeem branded vouchers, where 1 CheQ tweedle = 0.5 rupee. Trademark partners include Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon Prime Subscription, Ola, Uber, BigBasket, Blinkit, BookMyShow, Dominos, PVR, TataCliq, Croma, and many more.
CheQ fries can moreover be redeemed directly for cash, where 4 CheQ fries = 1 Rupee. If we convert the CheQ rewards percentage, you will get unappetizing 0.5% cashback in the above-branded vouchers, OR, you can segregate to get unappetizing 0.25% cashback directly in mazuma when you pay the credit vellum snout on CheQ.
The rewards in CheQ are far superior to CRED as of now. But considering that they are very new in the market, we are not sure how long they will be worldly-wise to sustain these lucrative rewards. Users should note that CheQ once revised its rewards a week ago. Until last week, the app was in a beta stage where the value of 1 CheQ Tweedle = 1 Rupee, but as of now, it has been depreciated to 1 CheQ Tweedle = 0.5 Rupee. Plane without this change, CheQ appears to be outperforming CRED when it comes to rewards.
CRED has been in the market for five years, and the using has built a robust reputation of instantly crediting the value to the wall once paid in the app. CRED says that all of their payments are processed within 15 minutes, which is true from our experience. We have witnessed snout payments stuff processed and deposited in the credit vellum in as fast as 15 seconds.
On the other hand, CheQ has been taking a little longer to petrifaction the payment to the credit card. Although we have only used CheQ only for a short while, the fastest petrifaction we experienced was of 8 hours. We tested CheQ with ICICI, HDFC, and Axis Wall credit cards.
CheQ took 8 hours to petrifaction the value into ICICI Bank, virtually 12 hours for HDFC bank, and it took two unshortened days for CheQ to well-constructed the snout payment petrifaction in Axis Bank. From our wits so far, CheQ has not been as fast as CRED. But the good thing is that all the transactions were completed without any issues. We did not squatter problems with refunds or declined payments.
Other than that, the only problem we faced with CheQ was that it did not recognize the OneCard when we tried to add it to the app. We are not sure of the word-for-word reason for this, but we can speculate that CheQ is only worldly-wise to process snout payments from credit cards from tier 1 banks like HDFC, ICICI, SBI, Axis, and others, as we have not had any issues with any of these wall cards.
CRED and CheQ are spanking-new solutions that provide a unconfined convenience for people who have multiple credit cards. However, the way these apps work involves accessing some of your personal data, which can be a rationalization for snooping for some.
CRED collects your credit vellum statements in two ways – once via email and once via SMS. Although the app asks for your permission to wangle your emails and SMS beforehand, here’s what happens in the background. CRED is worldly-wise to read all your emails and SMS, including your other financial transactions that are not remotely related to your credit card.
This only raises privacy concerns as a particular app is worldly-wise to read all your emails. This information can be used to build your financial profile based on your spending habits and send you targeted offers in the CRED app. While CRED says that they are very secure and that it is unscratched to requite them wangle to your emails, the concept of an app stuff worldly-wise to read all of your emails raises some watchtower bells.
However, these are not accusations we are making versus CRED. If you read CRED’s privacy policy, they mention themselves that if you requite CRED permission to read your emails, they can collect other financial and transactional data from your emails to create largest offers for you.
CheQ, on the other hand, only reads your SMS to retrieve your credit vellum statements for now. However, there will soon be a similar full-length to CRED that will indulge credit vellum statements to be retrieved directly from your emails if you requite your permission. And, you may have guessed it, CheQ’s privacy policy says the same thing – if you requite your consent to read your emails, they can read other financial emails to make largest offers.
We moreover noticed that some parts of CheQ’s privacy policy are word-for-word copies of CRED’s privacy policy. Well…
If we compare CRED and CheQ based on the ease of paying your credit vellum bills, CRED has a big wholesomeness with its faster transaction processing times and quick deposits to the bank. But CRED’s rewards system just is not as good compared to CheQ. If you value largest rewards, then CheQ is the right nomination for you as it offers unappetizing 0.5% cashback in the form of vouchers for Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, Uber, etc. You moreover have the option to convert rewards directly into cash, which is a unappetizing 0.25% cashback.
Both apps have their own privacy issues. CheQ needs to modernize on key features like the worthiness to delete saved cards and the option to well-spoken your worth in the Android app. CRED is a faster option for paying bills, but the cluttered user interface takes some getting used to.
In our opinion, as of writing this article, we would recommend CRED if you want faster and increasingly reliable deposits. However, if you want largest rewards, CheQ is the largest nomination for you!