PhonePe acquires Zopper Retail

Digital payments company PhonePe today said it has acquired Zopper Retail as part of its strategy to aggressively ramp up its offline business.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

As part of the deal, Zopper co-founder and CEO Neeraj Jain will join PhonePe as Head of Product, Offline Merchant Solutions, it said in a statement.

Zopper Retail is a hyper local Point of Sale (POS) platform for small and medium businesses. It had raised over USD 20 million in funding from investors like Tiger Global, Blume Ventures and Nirvana Ventures Advisors.

Zopper's other business unit 'Zopper Assure', which offers extended warranty solutions is outside the ambit of the deal and will continue to operate as a separate entity.

PhonePe, whose transaction ecosystem comprises of in-app, online and offline merchants, said investing in the growth of digital transactions at offline merchant locations forms a very important part of its strategy.

"Combining PhonePe payments with some of the capabilities that Zopper Retail offers as value added services would greatly enhance the adoption of digital payments for merchants," the statement added.

PhonePe is now accepted as a payment option across three lakh offline and online merchant outlets. The company crossed the 100 million user mark and also crossed the USD 20 billion annual total payment volume (TPV) run rate in May this year.

"Zopper has a very strong technology and innovation DNA, and Neeraj and team are also a great culture fit for PhonePe. Zopper Retail is specifically designed to meet the needs of millions of small retailers in India, and their strategy ties in very well with our overall vision of making digital payments universally accepted across the country," PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam said.

Zopper's Affinity Programs and Extended Warranty business will be spearheaded by Surjendu Kuila (Zopper co-founder) and drive growth for Zopper in the future, Jain said.