Flipkart acquired UPI-based payments start-up PhonePe

E-commerce giant Flipkart on 1 April 2016 announced that it has acquired payments start-up PhonePe Internet Pvt. Ltd.
•    The start-up PhonePe was launched in December 2015 by former Flipkart executives Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer.
•    As per the deal of acquisition, PhonePe will function as an independent business unit. The details of the transaction were not disclosed, however, the deal is not cash transaction.
•    PhonePe is Flipkart’s third major acquisition in payments, after it bought payments start-up NGPay in 2014, and FX Mart Pvt. Ltd, which owns a prepaid wallet licence, in August 2015.
•    Founded in December 2015, Phonepe is building a product where payments can be made by just using mobile number.
•    The product is based on Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a new process in electronic funds transfer being launched by National Payments Corporation of India.
•    The PhonePe team will join Flipkart but will function as an independent business unit.
•    The UPI is a part of a set of government programmes and technologies, together called India Stack, that companies can use to slash costs in offline authentication and provide services legally approved by the government to anyone with a mobile phone. The UPI is set to be formally launched in April.