PhonePe Deploys Over 10 Lakh Smart Speakers within 3 Months of Launch

PhonePe, India’s leading fintech platform announced that it has deployed over 10 lakh SmartSpeakers to merchant partners across India. The company has also processed over 100 crores (1 billion) transactions via the devices, within just 3 months of launch. This has enabled the company to further strengthen its offline merchant payments across the country. Introduced earlier this year in August for reliable and convenient payment tracking at merchant locations, the company has received phenomenal feedback from merchants on the device performance. As a result, the demand for  SmartSpeakers has surged amongst new merchant partners, across the urban and rural markets.

PhonePe has been a pioneer in enabling end-to-end payment solutions and building new offerings for merchant partners to make it easier for them to run and grow their business. The company was first to launch the interoperable QR codes, making it extremely simple for merchants to seamlessly accept digital payments from any UPI enabled apps; and the first to also launch Photo QR codes– addressing the need for personalization and safeguarding businesses against fraudulent transactions. Keeping up with the evolving needs of its merchant partners, PhonePe introduced SmartSpeakers in August this year for efficient payment tracking at the retail outlets.

The volume of digital transactions made to businesses has been increasing at a rate of 175% during covid owing to the extensive consumer adoption of digital payments. This has further amplified the demand for stronger payment validation mechanisms, especially in instances where it is challenging to keep track of several transactions carried out during peak hours at various QRs. PhonePe’s SmartSpeakers address this need, saving merchants a lot of time and effort in tracking transactions. The SmartSpeaker has a host of features like instant payment alerts, and a very high level of reliability, enabling merchants to no longer worry about any unauthorized transactions in their absence. The ease of receiving payment notifications in English and 10 Indian languages, and the high sound clarity also makes payment validation easier in the noisiest of environments, making it a preferred choice amongst merchants.

Speaking on the milestone Vivek Lohcheb, Head of Offline Business at PhonePe said, “Digital payments are now ubiquitous in India as they have helped eliminate various issues pertaining to cash transactions. PhonePe’s SmartSpeaker is a big step in providing cutting-edge payment services to our merchant partners, especially in the mass market, and this has opened up a new channel for engaging with our vast merchant base. Deploying more than 10 lakh devices in less than 3 months, marks a significant milestone given the speed & scale at which retailers have embraced this value added offering from PhonePe.’’

The PhonePe SmartSpeaker comes with dedicated data connectivity and is easy to operate without requiring any configuration, and it gets automatically linked to all the QRs in the merchant's store. It also has a dedicated battery level LED indicator for ease of use, along with audio alerts for low battery level, a dedicated replay button for the last transaction, and supports multiple languages.