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PhonePe
Indian financial MR technology company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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PhonePe is an Indian digital payments and financial services company headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.[5][6] It was founded in December 2015,[7][2] by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer.[8] The PhonePe app, based on the Unified Payments Interface, went live in August 2016.[9][10]
The PhonePe app is accessible in 11 Indian languages.[11] It enables users to perform various financial transactions such as sending and receiving money, recharging mobile and DTH, making utility payments, conducting in-store payments.[12][13]
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History
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PhonePe was incorporated in December 2015.[14] In April 2016, the company was acquired by Flipkart[15][16] and as part of the acquisition, the FxMart license was transferred to PhonePe and rebranded as the PhonePe wallet. PhonePe's co-founder Sameer Nigam was appointed as the CEO of the company.[17]
In August 2016, the company partnered with Yes Bank to launch a UPI-based mobile payment app, based on the government-backed UPI platform.[18]
In 2022, they were launching international UPI payments, allowing Indian users traveling abroad to pay foreign merchants with Unified Payments Interface (UPI).[19][20]
In 2022, PhonePe obtained licensing from the Reserve Bank of India for operating a Semi-Closed Prepaid Payment system.[21]
In April 2023, PhonePe launched a new shopping app called 'Pincode', focused on hyperlocal e-commerce and built on top of the ONDC platform.[22][23]
In August 2023, PhonePe launched Share.Market, foraying into stock broking and mutual fund investment via its subsidiary PhonePe Wealth Broking.[24][25] The platform allows users to trade in stocks and mutual funds, including intraday trading and pre-curated investment baskets.[26]
In February 2024, PhonePe introduced Indus Appstore, a mobile app store.[27][28] The app store offers over 2 lakh apps and games across 45 categories. Within just a month of its launch, the app crossed one million user downloads.[29]
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Ownership and funding
In December 2020, Flipkart and PhonePe declared a partial split, with Walmart maintaining its majority ownership in PhonePe and the two entities now functioning independently.[30]
PhonePe announced the acquisition of $350 million from General Atlantic, a US growth equity firm, at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion.[31] Subsequently, another $100 million was attained in primary capital in February 2023 from Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and TVS Capital Funds, followed by $200 million in primary capital from Walmart, and another $100 million from General Atlantic at the same valuation. This brings the total amount of funding raised by PhonePe to $850 million.[32][33]
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Awards and recognition
Legal challenges
On 14 January 2017, ICICI bank blocked PhonePe transactions, citing the reasons that it did not meet the NPCI guidelines.[36][37] Initially, on 19 January 2017, NPCI instructed ICICI to allow UPI transactions via PhonePe.[38] During this period, Airtel too blocked PhonePe transactions on its platforms.[39] A day later, on 20 January 2017, NPCI renounced the previous instructions citing the reason that PhonePe indeed violated the UPI norms.[40][41][42]
After this, PhonePe closed its operations on Flipkart's website,[43] to align itself with the terms stated in the updated verdict from NPCI. By February 2017, PhonePe resolved the issues with ICICI and Airtel.[44]
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ESOP
PhonePe allots employee stock options (ESOPs) to its full-time employees.[45] In November 2021, PhonePe was reported to have conducted a buyback of ESOPs worth ₹1.35 billion (US$16 million), covering 75% of its current workforce who have completed at least a year of service.[46]
See also
References
External links
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