At a time when adoption of digital payments and online shopping has been constantly increasing beyond metros, Visakhapatnam, has been a frontrunner when it comes to the adoption of digital payments across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, according to PhonePe. According to the company, in terms of users and merchants, Vizag has seen the most adoption of the digital payments major among non-metro cities.
In Vizag, which is one of the most populous cities of Andhra Pradesh, 87% of smartphone users are registered users of Flipkart-owned PhonePe, the company said in a statement.
“We have seen phenomenal traction in Visakhapatnam in the last one year, both in terms of customer and merchant adoption of our offerings. The customer base has grown by a whopping 175% over the past 12 months and over 75% merchants in Visakhapatnam now accept payments via PhonePe. We are now live at most organised retail outlets across grocery, fuel and medicines,” Yuvraj Singh Shekhawat, Head - Offline Business Growth, PhonePe said.
PhonePe, which claims to have over 8 million merchants across 215 cities, has witnessed over 55% of its transactions coming from Tier 2 and 3 cities in the last one year.
The data on digital payments growth shows that markets outside the metros are supercharging the next phase of growth. Powered by the trifecta of smartphone penetration, cheaper data, intuitive and simple app design, these markets, comprising 50 crore Indians is leading the way.
In fact, festive sales of e-commerce players also showed that a major amount of shoppers came from tier 2, 3 and 4 markets.
During Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale, more than 50% of Flipkart Plus shoppers were from smaller cities and towns, while sales from tier 3 cities grew by 100% (YoY).
"The larger push has come from Bharat customers, migrating to online shopping driven by the strong value provided from the online retailers across categories including mobiles, which have shown a strong surge during sale event despite having a relatively slow growing first half of 2019," Anil Kumar, Founder, and CEO, RedSeer Consulting had said at the time.