Flipkart infuses $500 million in digital wallet PhonePe

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Oct 13, 2017

Indian ecommerce major Flipkart has made one of its biggest investments in the digital payments space with capital infusion of $500 million (approx Rs 3243 crore) to its digital wallet firm PhonePe to scale up its up technology, reach and offerings, the company said in a statement.

“FinTech and e-commerce are among the most visible faces of a new digital India that is powered by the youth and technology, and both are set for outstanding growth. PhonePe is a critical part of our overall strategy at Flipkart to build a comprehensive ecosystem for our customers. We’re fully committed to make PhonePe the most preferred digital payments app in India,” Binny Bansal, group CEO, Flipkart said in a statement.

“The investment will be used to scale up our technology platforms, and expand our merchant network and consumer base rapidly. We have been growing at over 100% every two months this year, and this investment will help us maintain the same aggressive growth rate for the next two years. PhonePe is strongly committed to helping the Indian Government in realizing its Digital India vision, and achieving its target of 25 billion digital payment transactions by next year," said Sameer Nigam, Co-founder & CEO, PhonePe.

India is the fastest growing e-commerce market in the world and 'Global Payments Report 2016' states that the digital payment sector is set to reach US$63.7 billion by 2020.

PhonePe competes with the likes of Amazon Pay, Paytm and Mobikwik in India’s digital market. Flipkart’s rival, Amazon, has also been ramping up efforts to strengthen its digital payments platform, Amazon Pay.