By December 2022, PhonePe plans to double its consumer user base to 500 million by investing and deploying manpower particularly in Tier-5 and beyond towns and cities. The company has 100 million monthly active users and processed 825 million transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform in October this year, giving the payments app a market share of 40% in UPI transactions, it said in a press release last week. In an interview with MediaNama, PhonePe's head of payments Hemant Gala said that the company plans to double its merchant base to 25 million from 12 million at present on its payments network by next year, Hemant Gala, PhonePe's head of payments, banking and financial services told MediaNama. "Our vision is to become the largest transactions player in the country which is built on digital payments," he said." PhonePe works on the principle of building services across three axis: the right use-cases, the right products and growing the acceptance infrastructure and network, Gala added. Growing merchant network: PhonePe is scaling up its foot soldiers on the ground over the coming months, to grow the merchant network across Tier-5 and beyond towns and cities. At present they have close to 7,000 people on the ground that work on acquiring merchants, Gala said. "This manpower to increase acceptance will come at a cost. It will be difficult but if we solve for the right constructs and use-cases, it will give customers the option to migrate. Growing acceptance is not an easy…
