NEW DELHI — India’s digital payments platform PhonePe partnered with e-commerce marketplace Flipkart to launch a digitized contactless payment method for Cash-on-Delivery (COD) payments to ensure customer safety and drive down handling costs.
Both PhonePe and Flipkart are owned by U.S. conglomerate Walmart after the latter divested the fintech platform into a separate unit and sold a stake to parent Walmart.
PhonePe said its QR code solution would help customers who earlier opted for Cash on Delivery to pay digitally through any Unified Payments Interface (UPI) app at the time of delivery.
This will help reduce personal contact by driving contactless payments for customers who are traditionally more comfortable with Cash-on-Delivery.
“Digital payments adoption has become widespread over the past few years thanks to UPI,” Ankit Gaur, director of Business at PhonePe, said.
“However, there still continues to be a preference for cash on delivery among some customers at the time of delivery. Our solution not just offers a seamless and contactless payment experience to customers but also helps to reduce cash handling costs for e-commerce and logistics companies.”
“Continuing to play a big role in Digital India dreams of the nation relentlessly; Now Flipkart’s 300 million+ customers can pay for their cash-on-delivery orders digitally via PhonePe!” Rajneesh Kumar, the chief corporate officer at Flipkart, tweeted.
During the earnings results for its first quarter ended April 30, 2021, Walmart said both Flipkart and PhonePe “continued to experience strong growth”. The company said PhonePe’s annualized total payment value run rate grew by more than 150 percent compared to last year.
Walmart also said Flipkart continued to grow, “driving strong and sustainable eCommerce Gross Merchandise Value growth and strong trends in monthly active customers and users,” despite the resurgence of covid-19 cases.
“Always get amazed by how large PayPal has grown as an independent entity and much, much larger than its parent firm E-bay. Keep wondering if PhonePe will script the same story as well as an independent entity from Flipkart,” Goldman Sachs Summer Analyst Shubham Parekh tweeted.
In April, Flipkart acquired online travel company Cleartrip at a time when travel companies are facing intense pressure due to the pandemic, which has curtailed travel and led to falling revenues.
“Our recent announcement of our intent to acquire Cleartrip, a leading online travel company, underscores our commitment to transform the customer experience through digital commerce,” parent Walmart said in its first-quarter earnings release.
(With Inputs from ANI)
(Edited by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Praveen Pramod Tewari)
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