# PhonePe

PhonePe is an Indian digital payments and financial services company headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. It was founded in December 2015, by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer. The PhonePe app, based on the Unified Payments Interface, went live in August 2016.
The PhonePe app is accessible in 11 Indian languages. It enables users to perform various financial transactions such as sending and receiving money, recharging mobile and DTH, making utility payments, conducting in-store payments.

## History

PhonePe was incorporated in December 2015. In April 2016, the company was acquired by Flipkart and as part of the acquisition, the FxMart license was transferred to PhonePe and rebranded as the PhonePe wallet. PhonePe's co-founder Sameer Nigam was appointed as the CEO of the company.
In August 2016, the company partnered with Yes Bank to launch a UPI-based mobile payment app, based on the government-backed UPI platform.
In 2022, they were launching international UPI payments, allowing Indian users traveling abroad to pay foreign merchants with Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
In 2022, PhonePe obtained licensing from the Reserve Bank of India for operating a Semi-Closed Prepaid Payment system.
In April 2023, PhonePe launched a new shopping app called 'Pincode', focused on hyperlocal e-commerce and built on top of the ONDC platform.
In August 2023, PhonePe launched Share.Market, foraying into stock broking and mutual fund investment via its subsidiary PhonePe Wealth Broking. The platform allows users to trade in stocks and mutual funds, including intraday trading and pre-curated investment baskets.
In February 2024, PhonePe introduced Indus Appstore, a mobile app store. The app store offers over 2 lakh apps and games across 45 categories. Within just a month of its launch, the app crossed one million user downloads.

## Ownership and funding

In December 2020, Flipkart and PhonePe declared a partial split, with Walmart maintaining its majority ownership in PhonePe and the two entities now functioning independently.
PhonePe announced the acquisition of $350 million from General Atlantic, a US growth equity firm, at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion. Subsequently, another $100 million was attained in primary capital in February 2023 from Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and TVS Capital Funds, followed by $200 million in primary capital from Walmart, and another $100 million from General Atlantic at the same valuation. This brings the total amount of funding raised by PhonePe to $850 million.

## Awards and recognition

* In 2018: Won the UPI Digital Innovation Award from NPCI in 2018.
* India Advertising Awards 2018 in the Telecom and Technology category

## Legal challenges

On 14 January 2017, ICICI bank blocked PhonePe transactions, citing the reasons that it did not meet the NPCI guidelines. Initially, on 19 January 2017, NPCI instructed ICICI to allow UPI transactions via PhonePe. During this period, Airtel too blocked PhonePe transactions on its platforms. A day later, on 20 January 2017, NPCI renounced the previous instructions citing the reason that PhonePe indeed violated the UPI norms.
After this, PhonePe closed its operations on Flipkart's website, to align itself with the terms stated in the updated verdict from NPCI. By February 2017, PhonePe resolved the issues with ICICI and Airtel.

## ESOP

PhonePe allots employee stock options (ESOPs) to its full-time employees. In November 2021, PhonePe was reported to have conducted a buyback of ESOPs worth ₹1.35 billion (US$15 million), covering 75% of its current workforce who have completed at least a year of service.