To up its fight with Paytm, PhonePe raises Rs 452 Cr from Flipkart

Bengaluru-based payments firm PhonePe has raised around Rs 452 crore from parent company Flipkart. According to reports, Flipkart invested in PhonePe in July this year.

This is the first investment from Flipkart in PhonePe, after the former's acquisition by US-based retail giant Walmart in May this year. YourStory reviewed the regulatory documents related to the funding.

Recently, PhonePe had stated that it had registered close to 94 million UPI transactions in July. It also said it had crossed 100 million overall transactions mark, including other payment methods on the platform in July.

The total number of UPI transactions on the Paytm platform stood at 73 million, according to reports.

In July, PhonePe also made its first acquisition in the form of Zopper Retail, the Point-of-Sale (PoS) business of hyperlocal service provider Zopper. The acquisition was part of PhonePe’s strategy to aggressively ramp up its offline business.

Currently, PhonePe’s offline merchant base stands at a little more than 300,000, as compared to SoftBank-backed Paytm’s claim of seven million offline merchants.

In June this year, the Flipkart-owned payments firm had stated that they had more than 100 million users on its platform. Further, the annual run rate for the company stood at $20 billion then.

In the same month, Paytm also revealed its numbers stating that it had reached an annual run rate of 5 billion transactions, and $50 billion in GTV (Gross Transaction Value). According to Paytm, 50 percent of its total user base comes from Tier II and III cities.

Expanding to Tier II and III geographies is a huge focus for PhonePe at present, and a majority of the funds raised is likely to go into expanding its footprint.

This quarter, the company is also looking to install close to 1.5 lakh PoS devices.