PhonePe Launches Own Payment Gateway, Offers Free Onboarding To New Merchants

Fintech major PhonePe has launched its own payment gateway. While most payment gateways charge a standard transaction fee of 2%, the PhonePe Payment Gateway is giving a special free onboarding offer to new merchants.

“With this limited-period offer from PhonePe Payment Gateway, businesses across India that join the platform can save up to INR 8 lakhs. This straightforward and transparent pricing helps merchants enhance their payment experience seamlessly, allowing them to invest the savings from onboarding costs into growing their businesses,” the company said in a statement.

This move minimises the company’s dependency on external payment gateways. With this, PhonePe will now take on the likes of Razorpay, Pine Labs and CCAvenue, which currently dominate this space.

The PhonePe Payment Gateway is in compliance with the RBI laws to securely store customers’ tokenised cards in the PhonePe Card Vault with consumer consent, the company added.

“PhonePe is already a market leader in UPI with over 50% market share by value. The company’s ability to handle large-scale transactions and the strong consumer trust in the platform have translated into PhonePe launching its Payment Gateway business to provide the best-in-class payment experience to consumers and merchants alike,” PhonePe said.

It further said, the payment gateway will offer effortless integration, digital self-onboarding, and a seamless checkout experience for customers.

PhonePe Group recently also launched its Account Aggregator (AA) services through its wholly-owned subsidiary PhonePe Technology Services after receiving the NBFC-AA licence from RBI.

Earlier this year, PhonePe also introduced Pincode, an ONDC-based shopping application designed keeping consumers in mind to solidify its position in India’s bustling ecommerce sector. The company seems to be aiming to become one of the best super apps in India, just like Paytm.

Founded in December 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe claims to have more than 460 Mn registered users.

The new launches come at a time when PhonePe has aggressively raised a total of $850 Mn this year even amid funding winter. The company said that the funds will be used in a strategic manner. It also announced that it aims to expand its payment and insurance ventures in India.

Last month, PhonePe raised $100 Mn in equity investment from the US-based private equity (PE) firm General Atlantic.

PhonePe processed nearly half of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions in the month of May, 449.9 Cr, or 47% of the total UPI transactions. The value of transactions processed by it stood at INR 7.57 Lakh Cr during the month.