In a bid to expand its online merchant base, PhonePe has tied up with digital payments company PayU, a release from the company said. The partnership will enable PhonePe as a payment option when using PayU’s online gateway system, the release added. Through this partnership, the Flipkart owned payments service will hope to leverage the four lakh plus online merchants that PayU claims to have. According to the release, PayU has a market share of 90% of the entire e-commerce business in India. On the other hand, the merchant base of PayU will hope to get a boost in its sales owing to PhonePe’s users. PhonePe’s funding & expansion Last month, Flipkart Payments, the Singapore-based subsidiary of the e-commerce giant, infused Rs 451.66 crore into PhonePe. This followed Flipkart’s earlier investment of Rs 518 crore in PhonePe in March this year. The investment is part of the $500 million commitment Flipkart made to invest in PhonePe last year, in addition to the $75 million funds it infused since acquiring PhonePe in 2015. The massive amounts of investments coincided with PhonePe launching a variety of new services this year, including tie-ups with IRCTC, Goibibo, RedBus, Mumbai Metro and Ola Cabs whose services would be available in the PhonePe app. PhonePe has also been building its offline payments business to expand its customer base. To this effect, the company acquired Zopper Retail, a hyperlocal point-of-sale platform for small and medium businesses. PhonePe also developed its own PoS (Point of Sale) device based on Bluetooth technology to process and boost its offline transactions. It has also…
