Flipkart and PhonePe are looking at 'different paths leading to different outcomes'

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company, now owned by Walmart, is charting its own financial services journey outside of PhonePe. Sources close to both companies told Tech2 that the two companies, though owned by Walmart, have “different paths leading to different outcomes.”

“While PhonePe will focus on payments, Flipkart will focus on lending and making buying and selling on the e-commerce platform easier and affordable, and offer loyalty and cashback through Super Coins,” said one of the four sources Tech2 spoke to who have knowledge of the fintech developments at Flipkart.

Flipkart will offer credit to buyers and sellers: things like cardless credit with buy-now-pay-later features, checkout finance, and giving working capital loans to sellers, among other things. The company is also in the process of applying for an NBFC license.

While PhonePe will continue to build more use cases around UPI-based payments, it has barely any role to play in Flipkart’s world, explained a second source. UPI stands for Unified Payment Interface. “There are a variety of [individual] payment options. That’s PhonePe’s charter,” the source said, explaining that one company’s strategy won’t work for the other.

“Flipkart fintech isn’t focussed on individual payments or UPI. It’s affordability construct both for customers and sellers, and in the future, products will be in the same space,” the second source clarified.

“Sameer [Nigam, founder and CEO of PhonePe] is not of the opinion of getting into credit, which is important for an e-commerce company,” said a third source, who is not surprised that Flipkart is looking at a larger fintech play despite having PhonePe as a subsidiary organisation.

Original Source: firstpost.com