Meta lets advertisers in India pay for their ad campaigns in ‘no-cost’ monthly installments – TechCrunch

Meta has introduced a feature to let its advertisers in India pay for their advertising campaigns in ‘no-cost’ monthly installments for over three months — a move to help the social networking giant expand its advertising business in the South Asian country.

Announced at its annual business-focused summit on Tuesday, the feature allows Meta’s advertisers to convert their ad payments between $40 and $6,300 into equal monthly installments. Advertisers need to pay for their ad campaigns using credit cards from banks such as Citibank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India to get the no-cost EMI payment option.

The participating banks will charge interest on the amount transacted. However, Meta said it would bear the applicable interest payable to the bank and give it as an upfront discount to the advertiser on its ad spends. The idea is to encourage small businesses in the country, which might be feeling an economic pinch, to buy ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta also announced a 24×7 chat support for all its active advertisers in the country. The support will be available through the Meta Business Help Center.

The Menlo Park-headquartered company in 2020 invested $5.7 billion in Indian tech giant Jio Platforms to digitize small-scale enterprises in the country. Aligning with that, the latest moves including financial support for advertising and offering round-a-clock chat service for advertisers would help the firm bolster its revenue generation from the Indian market — alongside widening its presence.

“With these announcements, every advertiser on Meta in India, irrespective of their ad spends, has access to financial and service support, at the click of a button to unlock new growth opportunities. We know that each business is on a distinct journey, and we are committed to building India-focused solutions keeping in mind their unique needs,” said Ajit Mohan, VP and MD (Facebook India) Meta, in a prepared statement.

Last year, Meta launched a program to help small and medium-sized businesses secure loans. The firm said that program has expanded to over 19,000 postal codes across the country.

Meta identifies India as its largest market by users — but not income. It is striving hard to work with small businesses in the country to expand its reach on both fronts.

The company’s biggest market by users may be India, but the country falls well short when it comes to revenues. Meta doesn’t split its revenues by country, but its year-on-year ad revenue growth in Asia-Pacific was 13%, its strongest (PDF) globally. In contrast, the company’s ad revenue from North America and Europe declined by 4% and 12%, respectively. However, the overall revenue (PDF) from Asia-Pacific was $5.90 billion, which was less than half of the $13.25 billion it generated in North America. That underscores both the gap that Meta wants to close, but (given the growth so far) the potential opportunity it has to do so if it can find the right approach.