Leading online payment system provider PhonePe raised Rs 452 crore from Flipkart Payments Ltd by allotting 21 lakh shares at a premium under a rights issue, said Chennai-based business intelligence platform Paper.vc on Wednesday.
"PhonePe raised Rs 452 crore ($66 million) from Singapore-based Flipkart Payments Ltd under the rights issue by allotting 21,40,602 equity shares of Rs 10 face value at a premium of Rs 2,100 per share under the rights issue," Paper.vc Founder Vivek Durai told IANS from Chennai.
PhonePe board approved the fund-raising decision on July 9 and allotment was made on July 20 to ostensibly compete with well-funded rivals like Paytm.
The 3-year-old city-based financial technology (fin-tech) firm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's leading etailer Flipkart.
The latest round of funding is part of Flipkart's decision in last October to invest $500 million in PhonePe overtime.
The subsidiary has already raised $250 million with the inclusion of the latest funding.
Based on unified payments interface, PhonePe's app (application) enables its registered users to pay for utility bills, mobile and direct-to-home charges, sending and requesting money, credit card bills and insurance premium.
The app is linked to the user bank account for seamless secured transactions through multiple payment modes like Bhim, debit and credit cards.
PhonePe has been looking to position itself as a payments container and has also been building app-in-app platforms where services of other apps can be availed on PhonePe’s platform through micro apps. It has so far partnered with Ola and RedBus, and is looking at partnering with other players in the travel, hospitality, entertainment, food and other such high frequency categories.
In June, PhonePe claimed to cross the 100 million transaction mark. As per an earlier statement from the company, while NPCI reported that its UPI platform saw 236 million total transactions in July 2018, PhonePe accounted for the largest share of 40%, beating Paytm and Tez.
With IANS inputs