Why Does PhonePe Not Work When Other Apps Do? | Founder Sameer Nigam Explains -Watch Video

India Economic Summit: PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam on Tuesday graced the fourth distinguished edition of the India Economic Summit at Republic Media Network's headquarters and shared the firm's success story adding that the platform purposely chose to not facilitate certain transactions.

While sharing statistical data on PhonePe's market penetration, Nigam said "there is not a nook and corner in the country that does not accept digital payments".

But later he said, "PhonePe nahi chalta tab baaki apps chalte hain (PhonePe doesn't work when other apps do) and that's because we have one of the most sophisticated kill-switches," he said.

PhonePe: The Dream

While the market penetration for digital payment platforms like PhonePe started in the metros, he said, that the revolution actually also reached our villages. In terms of digital payments, at least, Nigam said that he wants "to light up India, coast-to-coast, pillar-to-post".

PhonePe: Reality

Sameer Nigam emphasised on the fact that while building PhonePe, a company ṭhat has over 50 crore users, special heed was paid towards building something for the country, that could be used by every Indian. Approximately 70% of Indian population exists in Tier-II cities, he said.

While Indian masses have swiftly taken to the digital payments infrastructure there is also a lot of stress that is associated with most transactions, on both the ends of the sender as well as the receiver, with every digital transaction. That stress increases when the payment does not go through, Nigam further explained.

Nigam further extrapolated by saying that PhonePe has retained that kill-switch on purpose. It was done because in digital payments and UPI, failure rates were high and PhonePe wanted to avoid that. This was done as a trust-building exercise.

"One of the things that we did to build trust is that if we think that your money will not go through and your money will get stuck is that we don't let you make the payment. We block it. That's called a kill-switch."

The company built that technology in 2016, months after UPI launched, to stay ahead in the market.

(Watch the full video here)