PhonePe Takes Another Step Towards Its Mission To Deploy 50 Mn POS Devices

Going ahead on its strategy of deploying its own point-of-sales (PoS) payment terminals, PhonePe has now joined hands with Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. a.k.a IOCL.

In a press conference earlier today, PhonePe announced to deploy its POS devices at all IOCL outlets nationally. As part of the pilot program, the POS devices have already been installed at 30 IOCL outlets.

Sanjay Sinha, GM RS-Loyalty from IOCL said, “As India’s largest integrated energy player, we have always been a pioneer in our industry when it comes to the adoption of new-age technology.”

As part of this partnership, IOCL customers can pay using UPI, Credit and Debit cards, PhonePe Wallet, and other external wallets like JIO money and Freecharge for their fuel purchases through the PhonePe’s POS device.

Pradeep Dodle, Head of Business, PhonePe said, “With this step, we can accelerate the pace of digital payments adoption by consumers at fuel outlets across the country. We are well on our course to meet our target of installing a million POS devices across 50 cities in India in 2018.”

PhonePe had launched the POS device to serve the needs of the small merchants in November last year. The company claims it is the ‘lowest cost’ PoS device in the world.

For past some time, PhonePe is aggressively strategising to move out of the shadow of its parent company Flipkart. The company is not only raising its flag on the UPI front but is also making its way into the offline domain.

The company is open to partnerships with large-scale companies to co-create independent fintech solutions. Recently, it entered into a strategic partnership with another digital payment app FreeCharge.

PhonePe is also currently live across more than 60K online and offline merchants including MakeMyTrip, PVR, Cleartrip, 1mg, FreshMenu, Faasos and Abhibus and most national offline chains like Café Coffee Day, Apollo Pharmacy, KFC, Barista, Spencer’s, FoodWorld etc.

The company has also teamed up with the western and southern segment of the quick-service restaurant chain McDonald’s and wholesale grocery chain Metro Cash & Carry to allow PhonePe consumers to make payments at their retail outlets.

Further, PhonePe had already added SafeGold to enable the buy-sell 24-carat gold feature on its platform on December 19, 2017, and has also integrated the bus booking app RedBus’ facilities. There are also plans to introduce food ordering, groceries ordering, travel and entertainment apps from service providers over the coming months.

PhonePe got acquired by Flipkart in April 2016. This was the time when probably the word ‘fintech’ was not even coined. Perhaps, if the PhonePe founders were aware of the impact demonetisation will have on the digital payment startups in India, who know, PhonePe had been working as an independent entity only.

In any case, the PhonePe team is working hard to find new growth avenues and the recent partnership with IOCL to deploy its POS devices, could set a benchmark for its growth ahead.