Phone Pe is an Indian digital payment financial technology-based company that was founded in December 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer. The company’s headquarters are in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. This application is based on unified payment interfaces (UPI) which make transactions absolutely easy within the stretch of your hands.
The app was created in the year 2015, it was acquired by FLIPKART in the year 2016 and went live in August 2016. Ever since then, the firm has seen only the glory of victories.
The company’s emphasis was to ease and comfort the cash system, making it completely digitalized and cashless, as Phone Pe succeeded in its vision it grew as one of the exponents of the digitized payment apps.
Phone Pe has incorporated 11 different Indian languages to its users for a user-friendly application experience. Besides, it also provides an enormous amount of services which makes the users/customers of the Phone Pe application ease their life and chores even more. The features offered by Phone Pe are phone recharges, DTH payments, investing in taxes and saving funds, buying insurance, mutual funds, gold and silver, and along with this, users can also make online payments by booking a ride or booking pane light.
Phone Pe is widely accepted as a payment option ever since it enabled its services and its customer acquisition keeps expanding over time. The app crossed its 5,000 customer acquisitions in the year 2019.
Phone Pe is licensed for insurance and operations for the payment system by the RESERVE OF INDIA (RBI) in the year 2014.
In today’s business world, data acquisition is a booming industry. Every tech or perhaps every fintech based company tries to evaluate its worth and services for sustainability in the market and Phone Pe is one such example. But, how did the phone pe make this truth into reality? That is the question. Well, let me clear out some of it for you.
Being said that, let us look at the Phone Pe’s revenue model, how and from where did phone pe earn revenue from.
PHONE PE REVENUE MODEL EXPLAINED
Phone Pe earns money through commissions they received when a user makes any kind of transaction using its app. It could be a phone or DTH recharge, or any online purchase using its app, bank transactions, money transfer, etc. The company also collects revenue from a partner through the switch platform. The commission is the major source of revenue for Phone Pe, it tries to increase its source through promotions of several brands and products on its app. Brands are promoted while attracting the customer through cashback offers, or gift vouchers. The commission strategy here is assembled exactly the way a recharge centre earns commission through a telecom company whenever a user recharged through its centre, the major difference here is that the phone is made digitized which ensures the payment is safe and handy at the same time making it a timely friendly application.
VARIED SOURCES PHONE PE COLLECTS AND GETS MONEY FROM ARE LISTED BELOW:
- BILL PAYMENT: When a Phone Pe user makes any kind of bill payment to a respective company, Phone Pe earns an incentive for it as payment is done using phone peas as an intermediate.
- ONLINE SHOPPING APPS: Several apps are listed in an application where a phone pe user can make a payment directly using it’s the app, and whenever a Phone Pe user does it, the company receives its commission. Shopping apps like GROFERS, MYNTRA, OYO, DOMINIONS, and many more.
- DIGITAL GOLD: Phone Pe allows its users to buy gold using the app. There are many types of gold options available in the Phone Pe App. Such as MMTC-PAMP LOCKER, SAFE GOLD LOCKER, and Gold Coin. A user can simply buy or sell gold for as low as 1 rupee.
- INVESTMENTS AND MUTUAL FUNDS: The app has lately introduced a mutual fund investment feature in its app. A huge amount of cash flow is generated through this service.
Though UPI TRANSACTIONS are a part of Phone Pe services, they, however, do not generate any kind of revenue from it.
Phone pe is neither an established bank nor it is an online payment bank. It’s a service-based application, which works through a monopoly itself.
Phone Pe is an online application that is trusted the most by its users which mapmakers the database even stronger and sharper and the company makes the best use of it by providing this analytics database to YES BANK and targeting its targeting users. Flipkart also utilizes the services of monitoring our purchasing deals through Phone Pe. The company generates a huge cash flow by providing them with a huge database and maintaining a monopoly in the market.
PHONE PE COMMISSION ON BILLS
Phone Pe has the largest UPI transaction database as compared to its competitor since the UPI segment of Phone Pe is the only service of the company that didn’t generate an income source, until now. The firm now will charge the incentives behind recharges, UPI TRANSACTION, and payments made through cards. The firm would charge a minimum amount of rupee 1 for every 50 to 100 recharges made and rupee 2 for recharges above Rs. 100. The minimum charges for recharges are initially the small-scale experiment the firm had undertaken, said the spokesperson of the company.
Adding to it he says, “To clarify on bill payments, we are not the only player or payment platform charging a fee. Charging a small fee on bill payments is now a standard industry practice and is done by other biller websites and payment platforms also. We charge a processing fee (called a convenience fee on other platforms) on payments with credit cards only.”
Being said that Phone Pe became the first digital payment app that charged for UPI-based transactions, unlike its other strong competitors who offered the transactions for free.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also placed a cap on the market share for UPI, which does not allow any player to have a market share above 30%.
The Bernstein report said the NPCI market share caps will require PhonePe and Google Pay to tone down their customer incentives to bring share towards the 30% cap.
