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Sangeetha Chengappa
Digital payments platform PhonePe has rolled out its ATM service across 5 lakh offline shops in 300 cities pan India and is targeting to roll out the service to 2 million shops by the year-end.
This expansion follows the successful 10-day pilot of the PhonePe ATM service in Delhi-NCR in 75,000 stores, which witnessed 6,000 withdrawals per day. “The idea is to offer ATM services at every 100 metres, so that customers in need of cash do not have to travel to withdraw cash. Through our network of 9.5 million offline merchant partners, up from just 1 million plus a year ago, customers can withdraw cash without any hassles,” Vivek Lohcheb, Head of Offline Business Development, PhonePe, told BusinessLine .
This service also helps merchants avoid the hassle of storing cash and making multiple trips to the bank branch to deposit their extra cash. Additionally, it will also drive more footfalls into these merchant-partner stores, increasing the probability of impulse buying, he said. PhonePe has used geo-tagging to make the experience of discovering and reaching the store offering ATM service seamless. A customer can simply open the PhonePe app, go to the ‘Stores’ tab and click on the ‘PhonePe ATM’ icon to locate nearby shops offering this facility.
Once they reach the nearest shop, customers just need to click on the ‘Withdraw’ button and transfer the required amount to the merchant via the PhonePe app. Once the amount is transferred, the merchant will give the customer the cash equal to the amount transferred. Neither the customers nor the merchants will be charged for this service.
Hiking withdrawal amount
The payments firm plans to increase the withdrawal amount from the present ₹1,000 per day to ₹2,000 per day, soon. Asked why the withdrawal amount is so low, Lohcheb said: “An internal study of customers and merchants revealed that maximum transactions happen for ₹100 and ₹500. Therefore, withdrawals up to ₹2,000 would address 80 per cent of all transactions.”
PhonePe has over 185 million registered users and over 66 million monthly active users with over 540 million monthly transactions. Around 69 per cent of its transactions originate from Tier 2 and 3 cities at present. “We are targeting to roll out the PhonePe ATM service to 2 million shops by the year end and go deeper across the country to offer the service to over 10,000 villages with population of under one lakh,” he said.
Using PhonePe, users can send and receive money; recharge mobile, DTH and data cards; make utility payments; and buy gold. PhonePe is accepted at over 9.5 million merchant outlets across 300 cities nationally. PhonePe also launched its own Switch platform in 2018, and today, its customers can place orders on 100 apps including Ola, Myntra, IRCTC, Goibibo, redBus, Oyo and Treebo directly using PhonePe’s mobile app.
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