PhonePe claims one in four Indians now use its app

The company has signed up 350 million users so far, meaning one in four Indians now use PhonePe, according to a statement. The registered user base has grown 28% over the past 12 months—from 273 million in January 2021 to 350 million in December 2021.

“We are delighted to cross the 350-million registered users mark, and emerge as India’s largest digital payments platform across all core metrics,” Sonika Chandra, PhonePe’s head of consumer platform and payments, said in the statement.

This “phenomenal growth”, she said, was driven by PhonePe’s technology team and its relentless pursuit of delivering the highest end-to-end transaction success rates in the industry, as well as its offline sales efforts in building the largest merchant acceptance network in India. “We will continue to push hard on deepening digital payment adoption and merchant acceptance across India,” she said.

PhonePe said it also processed over 500 million transactions at physical stores (including kiranas) in December 2021. This was achieved due to the rapid expansion of PhonePe’s merchant coverage spanning 25 million stores spread across 15,700 towns and villages, constituting 99% of pin codes in India, as per the statement.

PhonePe had made a foray into financial services in 2017 and has since introduced several mutual funds and insurance products like tax-saving funds, liquid funds, international travel insurance, life insurance, and insurance for the Covid-19 pandemic, among others. PhonePe is also accepted at over 25 million merchant outlets across India.