Soon, PhonePe Switch users can access Swiggy without leaving the app

India's leading digital payments platform PhonePe on Monday said it has integrated food delivery major Swiggy on its Switch platform.

With this partnership, PhonePe's 200 million registered users can now access the Swiggy app and order their favourite food from within the PhonePe app itself.

The service will be available across all 520 cities where Swiggy delivers food in India, PhonePe said. PhonePe Switch is a one-click entry point to a world of apps on the PhonePe platform.

It allows customers to seamlessly switch between PhonePe and their preferred food, grocery, health & fitness, shopping and travel and entertainment apps from within the PhonePe app itself. Users can log in to these apps without downloading them, with a single tap.

ALSO READ: PhonePe partners with ICICI Bank, to continue alliance with Yes Bank

PhonePe Switch enables merchant partners to integrate their existing PWAs (progressive web apps) or mobile sites to the platform, and instantly reach out to the vast PhonePe user base.

"Through PhonePe Switch, our effort has been to build a partner app ecosystem, which offers our users a very convenient way to access and engage with multiple apps, while enabling faster customer acquisition and high engagement for our partners," Rituraj Rautela, Head of PhonePe Switch, said in a statement.

"We are seeing excellent user traction since the launch of the PhonePe Switch and currently have over 100 partner apps live on Switch," Rautela added.

PhonePe users can place orders on Swiggy in a few simple steps.

All they need to do is: Open the PhonePe app and click on the Switch icon, Select the Swiggy app, Choose the restaurant they wish to order from, Select their favourite dishes and pay instantly.

"Through this partnership, we are delighted to extend the convenience of food ordering and delivery to the PhonePe Switch platform and be a part of the ecosystem of apps and services it has created," said Srivats TS, Vice President of Marketing at Swiggy.

As a part of the launch, some exclusive offers will be available for PhonePe Switch users.

PhonePe partners with ICICI Bank, to continue alliance with Yes Bank

PhonePe on Monday said it is actively working on adding more payment service provider (PSP) partners to offer its users more options for UPI transactions, even as the Flipkart-owned company continues to engage with crisis-ridden Yes Bank.

PhonePe had seen a service outage for nearly 24 hours, which started immediately after the RBI placed Yes Bank on moratorium on March 5. Its team worked overnight with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and new UPI partner, ICICI bank, to ensure all its services are up within a day.

"We were actively working on adding other PSP partners, this is also as per the recent NPCI advisory... PhonePe will shortly be launching an additional VPA (virtual payment address) with ICICI bank," PhonePe founder and CEO Sameer Nigam told PTI.

He added that once the Yes Bank moratorium is over, "it will mean PhonePe users will have a choice of two handles from two different banks to work with".

Following the moratorium, Yes Bank faced restrictions, including caps on payments that impacted its ability to settle transactions on behalf of partners like PhonePe. Other players like Edenred, which offers services like meal cards, also suffered disruption. Foreign travellers and students who used prepaid forex cards from Yes Bank are also facing issues.

While PhonePe declined to comment on the banks it is in talks with, sources said PhonePe is engaged in dialogue with State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and RBL Bank.

Nigam said services on the PhonePe app were fully resumed on March 6 for all users and merchant partners, with ICICI bank as our new banking partner.

"All PhonePe consumer @ybl handles are working as before and all 10 million of our merchant QR codes are working seamlessly as well. The platform processed over Rs 4,000 crore worth of transactions in 24 hours and saw its largest-ever volume of user traffic in a single day (with over 70 million app sessions)," he added.

Bengaluru-headquartered PhonePe is the fastest-growing digital payments platform in India with over 200 million registered users. Its platform saw 570 million transactions in February with the number of monthly average users at about 75 million.

PhonePe launches digital ATM, users can withdraw cash from merchant shops

As digital payment platforms thrive, Walmart-owned PhonePe has now launched its own Automated Teller Machine (ATM), a first of its kind service in India.

The service launched on a pilot basis in Delhi NCR will enable people to get cash from merchant partners through transactions with their mobile devices. The company said that the service will enable neighbourhood stores to act as ATMs for PhonePe users.

“The PhonePe ATM allows customers to withdraw cash without any hassle through our trusted merchant partners. It also helps merchants avoid the hassle of storing cash and making multiple trips to the bank branch to deposit their extra cash,” said Vivek Lohcheb, head of offline business development, PhonePe. He added, “Additionally, this new launch will also drive more footfalls for our merchant partners. PhonePe ATMs are a great way to start getting consumers and merchants to start adopting UPI (unified payments interface) payments in large numbers.”

With this new launch, PhonePe, which competes with Paytm, Amazon Pay and Google Pay, said that it is promoting a service that solves a real consumer problem. Now, a customer in need of cash can simply open the PhonePe app, go to the store tab and click on the PhonePe ATM icon to locate nearby shops offering this facility. Once they reach the nearest shop, customers just need to click on the withdraw button and transfer the required amount to the merchant via the PhonePe app. Once the amount is transferred, the merchant will give the customer the cash equal to the amount transferred.

PhonePe said there will not be any charges for customers or merchants to avail of this service. The withdrawal limit for customers will be the same as the limit set by their respective banks.

PhonePe annual loss more than doubles to Rs 1,905 crore in 2018-19

PhonePe, the Walmart-owned digital payment platform, more than doubled its losses in 2018-19 to Rs 1,905 crore compared to a year before, according to a registrar of companies (RoC) filing.

The firm, facing stiff competition from financial technology giant Paytm, as well as Google Play, has been working hard on gaining market share. Revenue in FY19 rose fivefold, to Rs 245.8 crore. According to previous RoC filings, the net loss in 2017-18 was Rs 791 crore, way higher than the Rs 129 crore in FY17.

Employee benefit expense in FY19 had risen 308 per cent to Rs 531 crore from a year before.

Google Pay posted a net profit of Rs 5.1 crore in FY19, with revenue of Rs 1,119 crore, an increase of 2.5 times as compared to the Rs 438.3 crore in FY18. PhonePe has been on an expansion drive. It has been trying to increase its footprint offline to take on Paytm and Google Pay, which has made major inroads into tier-III/tier-IV cities and smaller towns.

The company last month announced that its app drove 380 million transactions in August, with 90 million offline transactions. It claims to be accepted as a payment option across 6.5 million offline stores in 210 cities. According to several reports, the company is independently trying to raise close to a billion dollars for a next stage of expansion. It claims to have at least 150 million users.

While PhonePe operates its payments system through semi-closed prepaid instrument services and Unified Payment Interface (UPI), it says it is ‘also actively exploring other business avenues in the payments and e-commerce space’. PhonePe banks on its offline merchants to make payments through not only UPI but also credit cards, debit cards and external wallets.

Payment apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm are in an increasingly competitive market. While some incumbents took time to switch to the government-endorsed UPI, PhonePe, and Google Pay built their systems around the platform. Recently, UPI claimed to have completed a billion transactions since its launch three years ago.

PhonePe's super-app platform 'Switch', a one stop solution for customers

PhonePe, a Fllipkart Group company which started its journey in late 2015 as a startup focusing on digital payments, is all set for its next phase of journey by hosting other online commerce apps on its platform and driving traffic and facilitating transactions. The Bengaluru-based firm, starting today, unveiled a new in-app section called 'PhonePe Switch' which acts as a 'super app' integrating several other merchant apps and provide its 150 million odd users a single platform for their various online shopping needs.

"PhonePe Switch emphasises our efforts to build a partner app ecosystem which offers our users a very convenient way to access and engage with multiple apps," said Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO, PhonePe. “While start-ups are able to acquire high-quality users at low costs, larger partners get help in specific areas like driving non-cash payments, growing their business in select geographies etc.,” he added.

Currently managing around 50 such apps in categories such as food, travel, local commuting, grocery and others, the payments firm expects the number to touch 500 by the year end. Some of the third-party apps that are currently hosted on its platform include Ola, Eat.Fit, Grofers, IRCTC and MakeMyTrip. A PhonePe user can access, say, the Ola app, from within PhonePe without having to log into the Ola account or come out of PhonePe.

“PhonePe Switch and the other financial services products we are in the process of launching will be revenue drivers for the company in the long-run and help us achieve profitability, an area we will dedicatedly focus on starting next year,” added Nigam.

PhonePe ‘Switch’ is a major part of the company’s strategy to become an Internet services aggregator, which people will use for online shopping to ordering food or cabs in place of separate applications for these use-cases. Currently, PhonePe charges a small fee for a merchant transaction using its payments platform.

Rituraj Rautela, head of Apps Platform, said ‘Switch’ allows app developers to run targeted offers and marketing, besides testing new features faster on PhonePe’s user base. “Switch is a new distribution platform for our partners, who may see lower cost of acquisition for new users through us,” said Rautela.

Allowing users, who are already logged-in onto the PhonePe, to use third-party services within its app and over the same user experience, is also an attempt to lock-in users to its ecosystem.

Looking for growth

PhonePe had 60 million monthly active users (MAUs) in August, of which 40 million transacted at least once, totalling to around 380 million transactions in the month. The company claims to have enabled $100 billion worth of transactions on an annualised basis.

According to Nigam, while PhonePe has seen handsome growth over the past years, the focus is going to be on monetization now. In March, the company launched tax-saving mutual funds through partnerships with ICICI Prudential and Aditya Birla Sun Life. Interestingly, Paytm is also going after wealth-management and had launched a full-fledged independent service Paytm Money recently. Last week, it announced to enable users to subscribe to IPOs using its UPI enabled payment gateway.

In a report early this month, investment bank Morgan Stanley said financial services could be a strong revenue stream for PhonePe. “If PhonePe can monetise financial services, we see it gaining a substantially higher market share than in our base case. We model bull case revenues of $70 million from payments, $690 million from distribution of financial services and $2.5 billion from consumer lending,” by 2029, the report added.

In FY18, PhonePe made Rs 43 crore in revenue while posting a loss of Rs 800 crore.

“As more and more people transecting online and newer use-cases emerging, there are strong tail-winds for this sector,” said Nigam, adding that he expects phone pay to cross 90 million MUA mark by the year-end.

Walmart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe hits $95 bn annual TPV run-rate

Walmart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe on Friday said that it has achieved an annual ‘total payment volume’ (TPV) run-rate of $95 billion while clocking 335 Million transactions in July. The milestone puts PhonePe among the top digital payments companies in the country which includes SoftBank-backed Paytm and Google Pay.

PhonePe’s TPV run-rate has grown nearly 5X in the past year, since crossing the $20 billion mark in June 2018. This growth has come on the back of the exponential expansion of PhonePe’s merchant network, both online and offline, said the company.

"We are thrilled by the rapid adoption of PhonePe services across India. Last month alone, the PhonePe app was used by 60 million users,” said Sameer Nigam, chief executive and founder of PhonePe. “This means one out of every 15 Indian adults used the PhonePe app in July. This is both very exciting and very humbling for our company which launched less than 3 years ago,” said Nigam.

PhonePe crossed the milestone at a time when it recently received Rs 697.9 crore from its parent entity in Singapore called PhonePe Pvt Ltd (Singapore), previously known as Flipkart Payments Pvt Ltd.

With over 150 million users, the Bengaluru-based company said PhonePe app drives the highest number of merchant unified payments interface (UPI) transactions in India. It is accepted across 5 million merchant outlets nationally. PhonePe also launched its own Apps platform in 2018. Today, its customers can place orders on ride-hailing firm Ola, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, bus ticketing platform redBus and hotel network OYO directly from within the PhonePe Mobile App.

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 it would be led by the growth in mobile payments, according to a report by financial services company Credit Suisse.

Walmart tops up PhonePe wallet with Rs 743 cr to counter Amazon and Google

Flipkart-owned online payments company PhonePe has received Rs 763 crore (approximately $111 million) through fund infusion from its parent entity in Singapore, company filings sourced from business intelligence platform Paper revealed.

The fresh capital, which follows a series of mega infusions in 2018, tops up PhonePe's war-chest as the Sameer Nigam-led company looks to support user growth in a market heated up by the entry of Google Pay and Amazon Pay.

According to the documents, PhonePe, Singapore has infused the funds in PhonePe, the India entity, by subscribing to 2,915,964 shares in the latter at Rs 2,450 a piece. PhonePe, Singapore, earlier called Flipkart Payments, is a fully-owned subsidiary of Flipkart, Singapore, which operates Flipkart operations in India.