Flipkart's PhonePe gives UPI a big boost during Big 10 sale

PhonePe is routing many of its cashback and discount offers for its 10th anniversary sale

Digital payments platform PhonePe has processed over 500,000 transactions through UPI during the first two days of parent Flipkart's Big 10 sale, translating to more UPI transactions than the country saw in any two days last month.
 
According to data furnished by the RBI, 6.9 million UPI transactions were made during the month of April or an average of around 230,000 transactions a day. By itself, PhonePe has beaten that number and has given India's indigenous payment system a massive boost in the process.
 
"Over two lakh customers transacted on UPI for the first time which is a record of sorts for the network itself. We did more transactions on UPI in a day than all players (including us) put together compared to day before the sale," said Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO at PhonePe.
 
PhonePe, through which Flipkart is routing many of its cashback and discount offers for its 10th anniversary sale, says it processed over a million transactions during the first two days of the sale. Over 40 per cent of all pre-paid transactions on Flipkart, Jabong and Myntra were handled by PhonePe, whose app is installed on over 25 million smartphones.
 
Overall, the firm saw a three time spike in the number of transactions on its platform during the first two days of its sale, when compared to days prior to the sale. The recent introduction of credit and debit card payments too saw a twenty time spike as more customers paid through PhonePe to access better offers.
 
"This event was a big proof of concept and as time goes on we expect more of all transactions on Flipkart to flow through us. However, right now getting 100 per cent of Flipkart's transactions is not our focus. At Flipkart we always believe in a meritocracy model, so we have to earn our right to serve more customers," added Nigam.
 
Flipkart expects a five fold jump in sales during its Big 10 event that started on May 14 and will end on May 18.
 
While the firm is looking at PhonePe as a way to take on digital payments giant Paytm, internally it is looking at the firm as a way to get more of its customers to transact digitally. Cash-on-delivery has been the bane of e-commerce in India, with high costs of handling cash payments and an increased chance of returns.
 
Here PhonePe is working with Flipkart's logistics unit EKart to enable customers who've opted for COD to pay anytime between making the purchase and before it gets delivered. Further, the company is also looking at a way in which customers can pay for products without being present at the location of delivery while it is being delivered.
 
However, PhonePe isn't restricting itself only to serving customers on Flipkart. The company is looking to get embedded with other online and offline players similar to what Paytm has done.
 
"We've signed up thirty of the top fifty largest online merchants already and are at various stages of going live. We are running our first offline merchant experiment and have gone live nationally with Apollo pharmacies across all 2,500 outlets," said Nigam.