Flipkart owned PhonePe has received fresh capital infusion from its Singapore based parents entity, according to company’s latest filings with the Registrar of Companies (ROC). The digital payment lender has received Rs 698 crore from Singapore headquartered PhonePe Private Limited, ROC documents disclosed.
Earlier this year, PhonePe had already received Rs 743 crore from its parent company. These back-to-back funding is a part of Flipkart’s parent company Walmart’s capital commitment of $500 Mn to its payment arm. The commitment was reportedly made in 2017, the same year when Walmart acquired Flipkart in a landmark deal.
PhonePe is also separately holding talks with several high profile investors to raise capital from external sources, people privy to the matter claimed. Reports further claimed that the company has already received a nod from Flipkart’s board for raising funds from external investors.
The latest capital infusion will ensure that Flipkart’s payment arm stays abreast with its arch rivals Google Pay and Paytm. The competition in the UPI payment is radically intensifying that is keeping all the players on the edge. While Paytm is still the undisputed market leader by the virtue of user base, the emergence of PhonePe and Google Pay has certainly shaken the Gurgaon based company from its deep slumber.
In fact, the recent transactions numbers revealed by the Economic Times (ET) show that both Google Pay and PhonePe are inching closer to possibly dethrone Paytm from no: 1 podium. The ET report claimed that Google Pay and PhonePe posted transactions of more than $240 Mn and $230 Mn respectively in May, way better than $200 Mn transaction recorded by Paytm in the same period.
However, these transaction numbers may witness drastic change in the coming months with the official launch of Whatsapp payment, which will certainly add to the already intense competition.
