Flipkart-owned mobile payments company PhonePe has crossed 500,000 registered users and has over 1 million downloads from the Google Play Store, reports Mint. Note that for UPI payments, PhonePe has partnered with YES Bank and as such half a million virtual payment addresses were created for the bank through PhonePe. Last month, ICICI Bank said that it has more than 1 million virtual payment addresses created through their Pockets and iMobile banking applications. PhonePe said that it will be looking to replace cash-on-delivery with UPI payments for Flipkart, Myntra and newly acquired Jabong. Mint's report added that Flipkart has phased out Flipkart Money and Myntra Cashback. In March, Flipkart confirmed testing Flipkart Money, primarily aimed at cutting costs while handling cash refunds. The report added that all cashbacks and refunds will now flow into an PhonePe's wallet. PhonePe was started by three former Flipkart employees Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer in December 2015. In April this year, Flipkart confirmed that it bought out the payments company, but had said then that it would function as an independent business unit. This was Flipkart’s third acquisition in the payments space. In September 2015, it acquired majority stake for Rs 45.4 crore in FX Mart, which holds a prepaid payments instrument license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and in December 2014, it had acquired 65.71% stake in mobile payments platform ngpay. The UPI went live this month with 21 banks including ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Canara Bank and Punjab National Bank. However,…
