BharatPe Fintech Start-up | Bharatpe Wiki.

BharatPe is India’s rising merchant payment platform, it can accept payment from any payment app for free. Bharat Pe was founded in 2018 by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani. Its headquarters is located in New Delhi, India.

History-

BharatPe is an Indian-based start-up Company, it was started in 2018 by Shashvat Nakrani and Ashneer Grover. The company’s main aim is to empower millions of small merchants with a simple user interface.

In Oct 2018, Bharat Pe raised US $ 2 million dollars funds through the seed round. BEENEXT and Sequoia Capital India were the leading investors in seed round funding.
In 2019, the company also raised US $ 15.5 million dollars from its Series A fund round and US $ 50 million dollars from the Series B round. Sequoia Capital India, Insight Partners, Rabbit Capital, and Steadview Capital are leading investors in series A and B. Bharat Pe launched India’s zero MDR debit card and Credit card acceptance platform Bharat Swipe in the 2020 post-Covid-19 pandemic.

In Nov 2020, Bharat Pe surpassed Google Pay to take the No. 3 position in the UPI P2M category. The company has grown rapidly in the last two years by building a well-maintained merchant network. It has 5 million merchant users across the 65 cities in the country. Bharat Pe is the largest B2B FinTech lender in India today. It has deployed 50,000 PoS machines and enables transactions of more than Rs 900 Crore per month through PoS machines.

Currently, PoS machines are present in 75 cities of India.
In 2021, Bharat Pe acquired the multi-brand loyalty points platform PAYBACK INDIA for US $ 27 million dollars. The acquisition gives an exit to American Express and ICICI investment strategic fund, which holds 90% and 10% stake respectively. PAYBACK India will continue to work independently after the acquisition.

Bharat Pe Services-

BharatPe provides financial services to small merchants, grocery stores, and shops. The merchant owner can accept payment from any payment app free of charge. It can have up to 12% interest on accepted payments and even take a loan whenever they want. Bharat Pe makes payment acceptance simple by offering a single QR code to accept all payment apps such as Phone Pe, BHIM, Paytm, Google Pay, Mobikwik, and 150 plus other apps. It has made all payments acceptance-free for all shops and merchants without any transaction charges.

The company currently serves over 50 lakh customer merchants across the country and is the leading company in UPI offline transactions. Bharat Swipe is India’s first zero-free swipe machine for merchants. No monthly charges and no monthly rental, Get payment receipt for both QR and Card transactions.

Controversy-

Digital investment company Phone Pe has filed a complaint against BharatPe in the Delhi High Court. It alleged a violation of its trademark Pe suffix in May 2019. In April 2021, the High Court rejected Phone Pe’s plea to issue an injunction against Bharat Pe.

According to the High Court order issued on 15 April a single-judge bench of justice, C. Hari Shankar said, “ The evidence presented at court is insufficient to come to a final conclusion, that the Pe suffix would, in the public consciousness, indelibly be associated with plaintiff Phone Pe services. In July 2021, phone or has withdrawn its injunction plea, against Bharat Pe over the use of the ‘Pe’ suffix as it prepares to go for a full trial.

Updates

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 12 October 2021 issued a Small Finance Bank license to the consortium of Centrum Financial Services Limited (Centrum) and BharatPe.
• Bombay HC: PhonePe cannot claim exclusivity over ‘Pe’, in a tussle with BharatPe, The Bombay High Court has said that PhonePe can’t claim exclusivity over the mark ‘Pe’ in its suit against BharatPe’s usage of the suffix for its Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platform PostPe.