PhonePe plans 20,000 new hires to expand merchant network in rural India

Digital payments platform PhonePe announced on Thursday its plan to hire an additional 20,000 on-roll sales employees over the next year. This move is part of their strategy to expand their merchant network into India's smaller towns and villages. The Walmart-backed company plans to deploy more than 5 million devices, such as smart speakers and point-of-sale terminals, within the next 12 months to increase digital payments acceptance across rural areas.

This initiative follows India's National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) decision to levy a 0.4% fee on select UPI (Unified Payments Interface) merchant transactions. A portion of these proceeds will be dedicated to expanding digital payments acceptance among small merchants in underserved regions.

The company cited the recently announced Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) framework as the reason for their long-term investment in merchant expansion. As of August, PhonePe's payments network had already surpassed 720 million registered users and over 50 million merchants.