Walmart's PhonePe crosses 5 bn transactions on its app, a 5X yoy growth

Walmart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe on Friday said that it has crossed 5 billion transactions on its app. PhonePe had crossed the 1 billion transaction milestone in November 2018, and has grown 5x in the last one year.

The company said it is accepted as a payment option across 80 lakh micro, small and medium enterprises in over 215 cities in India. Over 56 per cent of its transactions are now driven by users in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. From recharges to money transfers, bill payments, to buying gold and investing in mutual funds, PhonePe said it has the widest variety of use cases and has emerged as the preferred payment app across the country. The company mainly competes with SoftBank-backed Paytm, Google Pay and Amazon Pay to tap the booming digital payment market in the country.

“We are delighted to reach this milestone...Our journey over the last 4 years has been incredible, not just in terms of the growth of the platform, but also in realizing the social impact that payments and financial services can create,” said Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO, PhonePe. “In particular, we believe the MSME sector is the core engine of the Indian economy and there is a need to create compelling solutions for MSMEs to thrive,” he said.

This year, PhonePe also introduced new use cases to make a customer’s experience on its platform more seamless and convenient including ‘Switch’, which does away with the need for downloading multiple apps. It allows customers to seamlessly switch between PhonePe and their favourite food, grocery, shopping and travel apps from within the PhonePe app, with just a single tap. The PhonePe platform also features a ‘Stores’ tab which helps customers discover hyperlocal shops in their vicinity. Customers can pay using their preferred payment modes like UPI, wallet, credit or debit cards at any of these stores.

The company said it has over 150 million bank accounts linked on its platform. It also has over 56 million saved credit and debit cards on its platform. PhonePe, along with its rivals Paytm, Google Pay and Amazon Pay, are eyeing the Indian digital payments space which is expected to rise fivefold to reach $1 trillion by 2023 and would be led by the growth in mobile payments, according to a report by financial services company Credit Suisse.