PhonePe launches UPI services for feature phone users in India
Fintech giant PhonePe has announced its plan to offer Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based payments for feature phone users.
The move comes after the company’s acquisition of GSPay technology stack from Gupshup, a conversational engagement platform.
For feature phone users, PhonePe will offer basic capabilities like peer-to-peer transfers and offline QR payments, targeting the largely ignored user base.
GSPay is built on UPI 123PAY
GSPay is a mobile app built on UPI 123PAY, the National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) UPI payment solution for feature phones.
PhonePe plans to customize and extend this recently acquired GSPay intellectual property (IP) and launch its own feature-phone based UPI payment mobile app in India over the next few quarters.
Interoperability between feature phones and smartphones
The upcoming PhonePe UPI app will offer basic features like P2P transfers, offline QR payments, and the ability to receive money from other UPI users.
This will create full payment interoperability between feature phones and smartphones.
Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO of PhonePe, said that this segment of users has been historically underserved by the digital financial industry and start-up ecosystem.