Flipkart’s Fintech Dreams: Rolls Out UPI Offering For Select Users

Taking another step towards strengthening its presence in the fintech sector, ecommerce giant Flipkart has rolled out its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) offering to the first batch of users.

A source aware of the development told Inc42 that Flipkart’s UPI offering has gone live for around 10,000 users in the first batch. The offering will be scaled up nationally over the next few weeks.

The development was first reported by Moneycontrol.

Earlier this week, Inc42 reported that Flipkart was planning to acquire a UPI licence with an eye on establishing a comprehensive payments tech ecosystem, similar to Amazon Pay and others. While it would encompass bill payments, peer-to-peer transactions, and contribute to the development of the Super.Money credit marketplace, the Walmart-backed ecommerce company aims for its users to utilise the in-house UPI handle for ecommerce transactions, potentially improving checkout conversions. 

Amid the business expansion, the company is also expected to lay off a few employees over the coming months.

As per the Moneycontrol report, the company is slashing around 1,000 jobs as part of its annual performance review process. Accordingly, the team size is expected to be cut by 5%. Earlier, another report said that the layoff would impact around 5-7% of the total workforce.

The company has around 22,000 employees on its payroll currently.

However, a source aware of the development told Inc42 that the layoff numbers are speculative. The company routinely conducts performance reviews and its result would only be known by the end of March-April, the source added.

During a townhall held on Thursday (January 25), Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurti said that the company’s financial health is improving and now in good shape, told the source.

It is pertinent to note with the increase in access to smartphones, UPI and the overall digital payments infrastructure have boomed in the country. Most recently, foodtech major Zomato also received the RBI’s nod to function as an online payment aggregator.

Meanwhile, as per the most recent data available, Flikart continues to be a loss-making entity.  

Flipkart India, the B2B arm of the company, saw its standalone net loss widen over 42% year-on-year to INR 4,845.7 Cr in FY23. In FY22, Flipkart Internet, the ecommerce giant’s marketplace arm, reported a 1.5X YoY surge in its net loss to INR 4,361 Cr.