PhonePe says it makes up 61% of UPI payments to merchants in November

Payments and financial services startup PhonePe processed over 100 crore person-to merchant (P2M) Unified Payment Interface (UPI) transactions on its platform in November, the company said on December 13.

P2M payments refer to payments made by individuals to merchants from PhonePe's platform at physical stores as well as on its app for mobile recharges, bill payments, and financial services.

As per data by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which handles UPI transactions, November saw a total of 163.8 crore P2M transactions, of which PhonePe claims to have processed 100 crore which is a 61 percent share.

Walmart-backed PhonePe has been leading UPI transactions with a monthly share of 47 percent of UPI volumes. With Covid-19 restrictions lifted and a rise in sentiment aided by the festive season in the past few months, PhonePe has witnessed a steady rise in P2M volumes.

The company also leads in overall UPI peer-to-peer (P2P) i.e. money transfers made between customers.

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Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO of PhonePe said, "PhonePe has emerged as India's largest digital payments platform, and we are leading the industry on all key metrics which includes value and volume of transactions, registered users as well as merchant coverage."

Additionally, the company said it has digitised a total of 25 million small merchants and kirana stores in the country. Offline merchant transactions (at physical stores and kiranas) on PhonePe's platform have shown 200 percent growth since last year.

The company attributed this growth to the expansion it has seen in offline merchant acceptance across geographies led by merchant acceptance network in cities beyond Tier-I. The company had laid down this target of digitising 25 million kiranas by the end of 2021 on August 31.

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"Earlier this year we undertook the target of digitizing over 25 million kiranas across India, and we have achieved this milestone in record time," Nigam added.

PhonePe has a merchant network across 15,700 towns and villages, constituting 99 percent of pin codes in the country, according to the company.

It has over 335 million registered users and allows customers to make payments, mobile recharges, DTH, data cards, pay at stores, make utility payments and also buy and invest in gold and silver.

In October, the company crossed two billion transactions including UPI and other transactions on its platform, the highest ever in a month for the platform.

Founded in 2015 by former Flipkart executives Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe forayed into financial services in 2017 with the launch of gold and has since introduced Mutual Funds and Insurance products on its platform.