PhonePe launches app-in-app platform, to allow cos to create in-app stores
UPI-based payments platform PhonePe has announced the launch of its app-in-app platform, where various businesses can create micro apps within PhonePe’s platform and leverage the existing transacting base of the payments app.
This is part of PhonePe’s vision of being an open payments ecosystem, enabling businesses of all sizes to build and deploy apps on its platform with a unified login and payments experience for customers. This will enable businesses to reach out with their services to a highly relevant and rapidly growing customer base of over 65 million PhonePe users.
Businesses can use this platform as an open platform where they can build experiences, publish it and make it available to PhonePe’s transacting base within the app. According to Rahul Chari, Co-founder and CTO of PhonePe, this is a win-win for businesses and consumers and encourages more digital transactions for merchants as well.
“PhonePe is the first transaction platform of this scale to open up for businesses to build their experiences within the app. Consumers can continue to enjoy the digital and fulfillment experience of their favorite apps from within PhonePe while being assured of the reliability and integrity of their payments. This will allow businesses to focus on service offerings instead of worrying about distribution,” he added.
The larger strategy behind this is to make payments interoperable. PhonePe wants to be able to offer its platform to customers not just as a money transfer platform but use it for transactions that are a part of their daily lives. Rahul says that all customers have to do it have the PhonePe app for all their daily transactions across businesses.
“Given the base we have, which is one of the largest transacting bases, it makes sense for businesses to invest in this and create experiences here instead of create their own app and use the transacting base of PhonePe and ramp up much faster,” he added.
As part of this launch, PhonePe has announced a strategic partnership with online bus ticket booking service redBus, which is the first partnership for its app-in-app platform. As a part of the partnership, Redbus has now gone live with an exclusive store on the PhonePe app.
“This strategic and exclusive partnership would enable us to reach out to a wider user base beyond our existing platforms. PhonePe has taken a unique approach to solve digital payments, which will further support our endeavor of providing a hassle-free bus ticket booking experience across the country. We expect many customers to take maximum advantage of this win-win partnership,” Manoj Agarwala, Vice President of redBus said.
This partnership is in continuation with PhonePe’s strategy to build an ecosystem of innovation. Starting with RedBus, PhonePe will continue to partner with more businesses to create micro apps on the platform. Rahul says that businesses with high frequency and quick transactions will be prioritized. Over the next two months, it is looking at food delivery, ticketing and entertainment companies, which it believes it a natural fit for the platform.
Recently, PhonePe also launched an innovative made-for-India Point Of Sale (POS) and is opening up the SDK so that multiple partners can contribute in building the ecosystem. It has already integrated third party wallets like FreeCharge and Jio Money on its platform to give users more choice and flexibility.