Flipkart-owned PhonePe receives $82.5 mn from Singapore parent

Flipkart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe has received a capital infusion of Rs 585.6 crore or $82.5 million from its Singapore-based parent entity.

PhonePe, Singapore, (formerly Flipkart Payments) was allotted 13,81,278 shares, regulatory filings showed.

This is PhonePe's third capital infusion from the Singapore-based parent entity this year.

In July 2019, the company raised Rs 698 crore (about $101 million) from its parent entity. Prior to that, the company raised Rs 743.50 crore ($107.7 million) in March 2019.

The current infusion comes a month after PhonePe filed its FY19 earnings, reporting a loss of Rs 1,907 crore while its revenues grew three-fold to Rs 245 crore. The company incurred expenses of Rs 1,296 crore on accounts of advertising and promotion costs alone.

Flipkart’s owner and global retail giant Walmart is reportedly looking to demerge PhonePe so that its ownership gets vested directly with it.

PhonePe competes with the likes of Paytm, Google Pay and Amazon Pay in the Indian market.

Digital payments major Paytm recently raised $1 billion (around Rs 7,173 crore) in a round led by US-based asset management firm T Rowe Price, along with existing investors Alibaba, Softbank Group Corp and Discovery Capital.

PhonePe may also enter into a partnership with ICICI Bank to offer unified payments interface (UPI)-based digital transactions to its customers. In September, the company announced that its users can subscribe to initial public offerings (IPOs) by using their unified payments interface (UPI) identification credentials.

According to media reports, PhonePe is in talks with investors to raise about $1 billion in external funding from the likes of Chinese conglomerate Tencent Holdings.