PhonePe challenges Paytm's supremacy, to turn top payment company soon

Paytm has never faced so much competition as it’s been facing for past couple of weeks. The competitive landscape for the digital payment major turned intense as WhatsApp, with its over 250 million users, started testing UPI-enabled payment in India.

UPI-based payment options have been witnessing a surge in transactions ever since its launch. The quick adoption of the mobile number-based banking system has been impacting wallet businesses in a big way. It’s expected to make wallet units of Paytm and MobiKwik irrelevant in a few years from now.

WhatsApp's UPI trial also created a furore and Vijay Shekhar Sharma launched a tirade on the instant messaging app and its parent entity Facebook for circumventing guidelines. Besides emergence of new rivals, including heavyweights Google Tez and WhatsApp, PhonePe is claiming to dethrone Paytm to become numero uno payment company in India.

The Flipkart-owned payment platform has claimed that it will cross Rs 80,000 crore in terms of total payment volume (TPV) annual run rate by next month, reports The Hindu. The company’s chief executive, Sameer Nigam said that PhonePe would take over Paytm in terms of ‘value’ (total amount transacted, not volume).

It has also claimed to clock 45 million transactions and surpass Rs 58,000 crore TPV during the last month. According to Nigam, the company is establishing an open payment ecosystem which would power businesses to open their store on PhonePe.

While it seems PhonePe has to do a lot of homework for bringing partners on its open platform, Nigam sees it as an edge over Paytm and others. The company is also in process to make software development kit (SDK) so that developers can create applications for a specific platform.

This strategy appears to be an effort to drive usages of PhonePe’s PoS device. Three months ago, the company had launched Point Of Sale (PoS) device powered by Bluetooth technology. It can be used for payments at Kirana stores, petrol pumps, food chains, and among others. Notably, merchants don’t need an Internet connection to perform the transaction.

With the competition growing thick and fast for SoftBank and Alibaba-backed Paytm, the ecosystem is gearing to see action-packed time into Indian digital payment space.