PhonePe, who claim to be India’s fastest growing payments platform, on Friday announced that it has grown its offline merchant base to over 1 million. This milestone has been achieved in less than a year and reflects on the platform’s phenomenal acceptance across both large organised retail stores as well as small and mid-size retail stores in the country. Being one of the pioneers in the UPI space, PhonePe enables merchants to accept payments from consumers through multiple instruments like UPI, Credit Cards, Debit Cards, PhonePe wallet as well as external wallets.
Speaking on reaching this milestone, Yuvraj Singh Shekhawat, Head – Offline Organized Business, PhonePe, said, “Our offline business has shown phenomenal growth in barely a year and we are very thrilled to have reached the 1 million mark. The entire payments process using PhonePe solutions is simple, fast and seamless ensuring consumers have a convenient experience and merchants are seeing tremendous value in that. We plan to grow offline merchant number to 6 million by December 2019.”
PhonePe has seen a remarkable growth in 2018 in the offline business space across key metros as well as Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities. This growth has been made possible owing to multiple convenient solutions being offered by PhonePe which makes it easier for the merchants to start accepting digital payments.
Solution type varies across store segments wherein:
● Small merchants can use the ubiquitous QR Code solution, that just requires a feature phone to get started and,
● Organized Merchants can use Billing POS Integrated Solutions, the PhonePe solution deployed on Pinelabs devices, QR Code Solution or the PhonePe POS Solution.
Both theses solution types are extremely simple and do not require any extensive training for cashiers and/or proprietors. PhonePe also has a merchant app to facilitate an end-to-end control for merchants on the payment process, including transaction confirmations and reconciliations.
Vivek Lohcheb, Head – Unorganised Business, PhonePe added, “The year has started on a high and we are glad to have on-boarded 1 million merchants on the platform. PhonePe's QR solution allows merchants to accept consumer payments from any UPI app and not just PhonePe, ensuring they don’t have to go through the hassle of dealing with multiple partners. We are also helping these merchants by providing them visibility on our app allowing our 150 million users to discover all the retailers and merchants in their vicinity that accept PhonePe, effectively increasing footfalls to their business.”