PhonePe digital wallet has big goals beyond parent Flipkart

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Mobile payments startup PhonePe, which Flipkart bought last year, has set its sights high this year.

In the process of launching the country’s first Unified Payments Interface-supported wallet for iOS, the startup is already aiming for a 100 million downloads by the end of 2017.

“We just crossed 10 million app downloads,” founder Sameer Nigam told Tech in Asia in an interview. Sameer wouldn’t say what the app’s active user base is, though.

The Android app has also received a facelift, complete with support for nine local languages.

“It’s something we believe is driving the usage of PhonePe because people are not intimidated by using an app that speaks to them in English,” Sameer said.

For those wondering why another digital wallet is becoming a big deal, here’re some details: the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which PhonePe works with, is a technology that allows bank-to-bank and bank-to-mobile wallet transfers with minimal identification. It is open source, which means competing banks can include it in their apps and transfer money between each other. The UPI was launched last year as part of the Indian government’s push towards a cashless society.

See: India makes an ambitious move toward a cashless society

Once integrated into apps, it can also be adapted to allow wallet-to-wallet transfers.

Working with this technology allows PhonePe easy digital transaction to any customer who logs in. Unlike in many digital wallets, cashbacks and refunds used via this app can be used wherever the customer wants, and are not tied down to merchants.

Advantage Flipkart

Being a Flipkart subsidiary, PhonePe is now integrated with Flipkart, Myntra, and Jabong payments, which directly translates into a ready customer base. For Flipkart, it means a theoretical seamless payments process, potentially cutting back on cash-on-delivery issues.

Before it acquired PhonePe, Flipkart launched its own mobile wallet, Flipkart Money. Flipkart Money was launched 18 months after it shut down PayZippy, a mobile wallet that it started too early and without enough focus to do well. Flipkart’s rival Snapdeal owns payment wallet Freecharge, and India’s largest payment wallet Paytm entered the ecommerce game some years ago.

A full-blown, aggressive push – not surprising considering Flipkart’s resources – could translate PhonePe from yet another wallet to the go-to medium of transaction in the country. In the very least, it will gain a solid foothold in a market currently split into various digital wallets (of which Paytm is king) and cashless experiments.

See: Light at the end of the tunnel: here’s the multiplier effect of going cashless