PhonePe’s offline merchant base grows 5 times in 6 months to 5 mn in India

Bengaluru-based payments platform PhonePe has announced the growth of its offline merchant base in India to over five million from one million six months ago.

On reaching the milestone, PhonePe has offered its consumers a cashback of up to Rs 1,000 when they pay using the PhonePe quick response (QR) code at an offline store.

“The offline segment has seen phenomenal growth in the last year. We started this year with one million merchants and that number has already grown to five million in a span of just six months,” said Yuvraj Singh Shekhawat, head, offline business growth, PhonePe.

The platform has a merchant app to facilitate end-to-end control on the payment process for merchants including transaction confirmation and reconciliation.

Its offerings include instant settlements and zero processing fee on UPI (Unified Payments Interface) transactions for merchants. PhonePe has introduced a Stores tab on the app, enabling hyper-local discovery of partner merchants for users and is also working on features that will allow merchants to showcase their offers to users.

The payments platform has a presence in over 150 cities and it continues to expand into newer geographies, enabling even local kiranas to accept payments from consumers through digital payment mediums like UPI.

“We will continue to expand our reach across the length and breadth of the country, building innovative solutions that make the process of digital payments simple, convenient and hassle-free,” added Shekhawat.

PhonePe is accepted across five million merchant outlets nationally.