FinTech news in PhonePe category

PhonePe has raised another $200 million as part of an ongoing round, a deliberation that has now helped it pull $650 million in recent weeks despite the market slump, as the Indian fintech giant bulks up its war chest following the recent separation from the parent firm Flipkart.

Onboarding merchants to accept the UPI payments in the foreign markets will be a key test for India’s NPCI, because without merchants, users on PhonePe and other Indian UPI payments apps won’t be able to make any payments. PhonePe’s step is also in line with the vision of NPCI, the body that oversees the UPI payments, which believes that within this year Indians in many foreign cities including Dubai will not need to use any other payment method, according to one of the fintech execs. Bengaluru-headquartered fintech giant PhonePe said on Tuesday that it extending support for UPI international payments in the UAE, Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan. Ideally, the acquiring side UPI players will need to partner with local payments processor or aggregators that can extend support for UPI at scale among the local merchants.

PhonePe, which is valued at $12 billion, has projected a revenue of $325 million in the calendar year 2022 and $504 million in 2023, according to a valuation report prepared by the auditing firm KPMG and filed by PhonePe. A concern for PhonePe’s growth was Indian regulators enforcing a market cap check on each player, but the deadline for the new guidelines was extended last month and now won’t come into effect until 2025, giving PhonePe another two years of fast-growth. The nine-month financials marks a jump from the $201.6 million revenue that the Bengaluru-headquartered generated in the 12-month period ending in financial year March last year. The startup, backed by Walmart, doesn’t expect to turn EBIDTA positive, a key profitability metric, until the calendar year 2025, KMPG wrote in its valuation report.

Walmart is preparing to spend over $2.5 billion in India as the retailer doubles down on the opportunities it sees in India e-commerce and payments markets even as the firm contends with rising costs amid the market downturns. Walmart, which missed the e-commerce race in the U.S., has coughed up over $20 billion on Flipkart and PhonePe to buy the lion’s share in India’s e-commerce and payments markets. Amazon faced a very public setback in the country last year after India’s largest retail giant Reliance outwitted the American firm into securing retailer Future Group’s assets. The company, which owns majority stake in Flipkart, is now looking to spend about $1.5 billion to buy back e-commerce firm’s shares from early backers Tiger Global and Accel Partners, Indian newspaper Economic Times reported Thursday.

Kuila said PhonePe never held any stake in Zopper, and the startup, which counts Tiger Global among its backers, continues to be supported by its early backers and new investors. Zopper currently has presence in over 1,200 Indian cities and has partnered with over 150 players in the industry, including retail group Amazon, ride-hailing startup Ola, retail chain Croma, phonemaker Xiaomi, Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, and Equitas Small Finance Bank. He said Zopper is initially aiming to first reach nearly $1 billion in revenue, and over the course of about five years it will file for an initial public offering. That business, an API platform for insurance infrastructure, said on Tuesday it has raised $75 million in new funding.

Bengaluru-headquartered Slice, which became a unicorn late last year, plans to introduce UPI payments for its users within weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. National Payments Corporation of India, the governing body that oversees UPI ecosystem, is also working to push new changes that are positioned to create a level-field among UPI players.