India's digital payments market is growing rapidly, with startups performing well

According to the Financial Times, digital payment development in India is booming. In addition to American and Chinese companies seizing the opportunity to enter the market, Indian startups are also ready to go. Among them, the Indian startup BharatPe cooperates with many small traders, employs more than 3,000 employees in just one year, and signs contracts with as many as 1.8 million merchants.

BharatPe works with many small merchants who are not valued by banks but are the backbone of India's economy. It has signed contracts with merchants first, providing them with store QR codes so that they can accept digital payments through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) promoted by the Indian government.

BharatPe also offers some financial services, such as loans ranging from $350 to $3,500. CEO and co-founder Ashneer Grover said it has received a lot of positive reviews since its launch last year.

Grover said that they aim to become a digital bank for merchants and have applied to become a non-bank financial institution, and they expect to get a license in 2019 or early 2020.

BharatPe has signed up 1.8 million merchants as it competes with larger companies such as Alibaba's Paytm and Amazon.

Although the current Indian electronic payment market is still dominated by Paytm and PhonePe, owned by US e-commerce company Walmart, which together account for 70% of the market share in India, Indian research agency Kalagato said that because there are still not enough services in this field, small companies like BharatPe can also thrive.

India is seen as a major battleground by many foreign companies, who are optimistic about the country's long-term growth. Facebook's WhatsApp has also been rumored to launch its first electronic payment service in India.

In addition, the US e-commerce company Walmart also bought Flipkart, the largest e-commerce company in India, in 2018, and used PhonePe, an e-payment company under Flipkart, as a weapon to enter the Indian digital payment market. PhonePe aims to become an application that integrates chat, financial services, and games like WeChat in China. Founder Sameer Nigam said that there are currently 75 small plug-ins on the PhonePe platform, and it also provides two services, digital currency and mutual funds, and is expected to continue to expand in the future.

PwC said the market was too large to become an oligopoly and should be able to accommodate multiple competitors in the short to medium term.