PhonePe acquires 25 mn new merchants, kirana stores in less than a year

Digital payments provider PhonePe, today, said that 25 million small merchants and kirana stores across India had joined its platform. The company onboards merchants for both its payments services, and to create their own stores inside the PhonePe app. According to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), PhonePe and Google Pay account for the most number of payments done through the government's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) solution.

"Earlier this year we undertook the target of digitizing over 25Mn kiranas across India, and we have achieved this milestone in record time," said Sameer Nigam, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of PhonePe.

The digital payments company also claimed that offline merchant transactions on its platform have increased by 200% since last year. It attributed this growth to a rapid expansion in offline merchant acceptance across the country. The company also said that it has a merchant network in 15,700 towns and villages, constituting 99% pin codes in India.

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According to PhonePe, the company has processed over a billion peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions in November alone. P2M transactions on PhonePe include payments made by users at offline and online stores and all utility payments like recharges, bill payments and financial services.