Bengaluru, 22 February 2023: PhonePe, India’s leading fintech platform, today, announced its record-high distribution of 20 Lakh SmartSpeakers within just six months of launch. This is the fastest ramp-up seen for such devices among offline merchants in the country. PhonePe’s SmartSpeakers help validate customer payments without any intervention, and their speed of audio confirmations has helped build exceptional trust and reliability across over 3.5 Crore merchants on the company’s platform.
As merchants across India are increasingly adopting the PhonePe SmartSpeakers, they are realizing the value it creates for their business every day. On average, PhonePe SmartSpeakers are being used for the validation of more than 75 crore transactions per month. Merchant partners spread across ~16,000 pin codes (>75% pin codes) in the country are now using the SmartSpeaker, with Tier III locations seeing the deployment of more than 5 lakh devices.
Some of the features that make this device stand out in the market include portability, a best-in-class battery, great audio clarity even in the noisiest of environments, and the compact and versatile form factor which allows merchants to use it even in the most congested counter spaces. Earlier merchants using feature phones relied heavily on SMS, but now with the PhonePe SmartSpeakers, their payment validation experience has been significantly eased. PhonePe SmartSpeakers provide payment notifications in 11 Indian languages and comes with up to 4 days of battery life, dedicated data connectivity, a dedicated battery level LED indicator for ease of use, audio alerts for low battery level, and a dedicated replay button for the last transaction. By offering such convenience to merchants, PhonePe is seeing the successful adoption of PhonePe’s SmartSpeakers in the market, thus enabling an increase in digital payments.
Speaking on this milestone, Vivek Lohcheb, Head of Offline Business at PhonePe said, “The deployment of over 20 lakh SmartSpeakers across the country in record time is a testimony to PhonePe’s superior execution capabilities. PhonePe has always crafted innovative products and customized offerings to address unique merchant requirements. We are delighted to see our SmartSpeakers being widely accepted across all regions and cities of the country. This strong merchant preference for our SmartSpeakers is due to our device performance, and the trust associated with PhonePe as a brand. As we continue to build for our merchants, we will enhance the hardware and software capabilities of the device to actively benchmark our product in the market.”
PhonePe provides a suite of services to offline merchants which primarily include the interoperable QR code to accept digital payments through any UPI-enabled app, the PhonePe Stores functionality where merchants can access a large base of customers in their vicinity, the PhonePe Business app to facilitate end-to-end control of an entire payment process, Store Analytics feature for merchants to see their ratings and reviews, payment links for merchants to collect payment for goods and services remotely, and now, SmartSpeakers for reliable & convenient payment tracking at stores.