What Merchants Of Bharat Need Next, PhonePe Builds First

PhonePe recently crossed 50 million merchants across India, a number built one product at a time. Every tool in its merchant stack, from a QR sticker to an AI powered payment page, exists because an earlier one uncovered a new need. That pattern, building for where a merchant is today and then building again for where the business is headed next, is what has taken PhonePe from a single QR code in 2016 to a full suite of payment, credit, and business growth tools today.

This ties back to PhonePe's broader vision for Bharat, which is about giving every Indian an equal opportunity to unlock the flow of money and access to services, wherever they are. Every product in the merchant stack is built with that same intent, making sure a shop in a metro and a stall in a smaller town have equal access to the same tools.

Where it All Started

It starts with Scan ‘n’ Pay, rolled out alongside PhonePe’s own launch in 2016, which gave merchants an easy way into digital payments, with no upfront cost and no technical setup needed. Payments go straight into a merchant’s bank account with instant confirmation. Over time, this everyday activity builds into a transaction history with real financial value, as it did for Bengaluru flower seller Devi Rani and for Mysuru’s Sindoor Sarees. “My staff is able to handle the payments now,” said Sanchit of Sindoor Sarees. “It is not important for me to be present at the shop all the time.”

As merchants using Scan ‘n’ Pay grew busier, a new need surfaced, which was, keeping up with payments without losing time at the counter. PhonePe built the SmartSpeaker in 2022 to meet it, confirming payments out loud in multiple regional languages so merchants could focus on customers instead of checking their phone for every transaction. “The speaker is very useful,” said Ashirbad, who runs the Karukrit Art and Craft Emporium in Santiniketan. “The payment is announced immediately, so fraud does not happen.”

For merchants managing higher volumes or multiple stores, a faster counter was not enough on its own, they also needed a way to accept every kind of payment. In 2023, PhonePe brought Point-of-Sale (POS) devices, bringing card, wallet, and UPI acceptance into a single portable terminal for merchants serving customers who paid in more ways than one.

As payments grew and businesses expanded to multiple outlets and business lines, the PhonePe Business App became the single dashboard merchants needed to manage transactions, settlements, and reconciliation across different outlets or even different businesses. Prashant Prakash, VP of Sales and Operations at Polar Bear, the ice cream chain that started in Karnataka and now runs multiple outlets, said the company looked for a partner that could match its pace of growth, including onboarding, reconciliation, reliability, and uptime. According to him, PhonePe has been consistent as the chain has expanded to new locations.

The next shift came the same year, as merchants started selling beyond their counters altogether, moving online. PhonePe launched its own Payment Gateway in 2023 to bring the same simple setup to e-commerce, with checkout and payment links and no hidden charges. And once a merchant had a transaction history built up through any of these tools, PhonePe turned that history into something new: access to capital and protection. Merchant Lending, also launched in 2023 did exactly this, turning transaction history into paperwork free loans, the same lending route Devi Rani used to expand her flower business.

Building The Next Move Before Merchants Ask For It

That PhonePe instinct of watching where merchants get stuck and building a way through it showed up most recently in SmartPages, an AI powered tool launched in June 2026 inside the PhonePe Payment Gateway dashboard. A merchant describes what they sell, in any regional language, and the AI creates a product copy and a ready to use payment page around it, cutting a job that once took weeks down to a few minutes. PhonePe built it to solve two common problems for online sellers: not knowing how to build a website, and not having the time to write marketing copy for one.

Each of these products from QR codes to POS devices to SmartPages, traces back to the same belief of spotting what a business needs next, and building it before the gap becomes a problem.

PhonePe’s success isn't measured by a single breakthrough product, but by an ever-expanding fintech ecosystem that scales alongside the ambitions of its millions of merchants across Bharat.