“I’m probably the dumbest guy [among the founders of payments companies],” says Ashneer Grover, the CEO and co-founder of BharatPe, a payments app for merchants. “But I’m the dumb guy who figured the one thing others were reluctant to do.” That epiphany, he says, was that consumer-focused payments companies like Paytm*, Flipkart-owned PhonePe, or Amazon Pay would want payments to happen on their own network. A closed network where Paytm users, for example, can only use the app with merchants who accept Paytm. So a merchant needs to have QR codes of multiple companies to cater to different users’ preferences.
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BharatPe and the QR code street fight for payments dominance
One-year-old payments company focused on merchants has seen a swift rise standing atop the shoulders of the consumer-focused payments apps. But payments supremacy isn’t the destination for BharatPe, merely the vehicle
One year is enough time for a company doing UPI payments to go from insignificant to challenger
BharatPe with its focus only on merchants, has set off a street fight with Paytm and PhonePe to plaster stores with QR codes
BharatPe claims it’s the market leader with 21 million transactions among offline merchants using UPI. But rivals dispute it
QR codes are a red herring. BharatPe actually wants to bring banking products to merchants
