Scaler Pod - The Software Engineer's Podcast
SCALER POD 14 - Rahul Chari, Founder & CTO, PhonePe | UPI & India's Digital Payments Revolution
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- PhonePay strategically organizes its app's information architecture to avoid overwhelming users and tailors the user experience to specific life stages, preventing information overload and facilitating smooth user adoption.
- PhonePay addresses the challenges of device fragmentation and performance by investing in optimal device support, performance optimization, and customized network library with quality of service priorities for efficient and reliable data transmission.
- PhonePay deals with the variability in last-mile internet and devices through careful engineering, prioritizing just-in-time messages, leveraging their own instruction models, and optimizing the user experience on each platform individually to ensure a seamless and performant user experience across a wide range of devices and network conditions.
Deep dives
Maintaining a Clear Information Architecture
PhonePay strategically organizes its app's information architecture to avoid overwhelming users. The homepage focuses on send money and bill payments, ensuring simplicity and user-friendly navigation. User journeys are carefully crafted, moving from send and spend to manage and grow money, gradually introducing financial services. This approach tailors the user experience to specific life stages, preventing information overload and facilitating smooth user adoption.
Addressing Fragmentation and Performance
PhonePay addresses the challenges of device fragmentation and performance by investing in optimal device support and performance optimization. This includes optimizing the scan and pay feature, leveraging machine learning models on devices, and continuously monitoring performance on different device segments to identify areas for improvement. Their network library is also customized with quality of service priorities to ensure efficient and reliable data transmission. Additionally, they have developed their own publish/subscribe system for efficient notifications without relying solely on push notifications.
Handling Variability in Last-Mile Internet and Devices
PhonePay deals with the variability in last-mile internet and devices through careful engineering. They prioritize just-in-time messages and leverage their own instruction models for efficient delivery. They also address the challenges of multiple devices and operating systems, recognizing that UI similarity is not necessarily essential, and focusing on optimizing the user experience on each platform individually. This allows them to ensure a seamless and performant user experience across a wide range of devices and network conditions.
Emphasizing Native Architecture for Speed and Security
PhonePay follows a native approach to its mobile app, prioritizing speed and security. They avoid cross-platform frameworks and use native languages and libraries for optimal performance. By doing so, they achieve a higher level of control, security, and reliability. This native approach is crucial for a utilitarian app like PhonePay, where speed and user trust are paramount.
Emphasizing the Importance of Partnership Model in Fintech
The speaker believes that being a bank is not necessary for fintech companies like Phone Pay. They can play a powerful role by partnering with banks as a distribution platform. By creating better user experiences and introducing new products in partnership with banks, fintech companies can offer more value to users. The speaker emphasizes that the key is to focus on being a highly scalable, performance-oriented, and intelligent distribution platform.
The Role of AI in Smart Recommendations and Personalized Services
The speaker highlights the potential of AI in various areas, such as insurance, claims processing, and financial advisory. AI can assist in providing smart recommendations, delivering personalized experiences, and improving efficiency in areas like claims processing. Conversational AI and data personalization can play a significant role in enhancing user experiences, especially in areas where human interaction is traditionally required. Overall, AI-powered models have immense potential in driving smart distribution and enhancing the capabilities of fintech companies.
In this episode of Scaler Pod, we have Rahul Chari, Founder and CTO, PhonePe. We explore the driving forces behind PhonePe's success and its pivotal role in shaping UPI's growth and adoption. Also, unveiling the origins of UPI, the challenges faced during its implementation, and how PhonePe has played a significant role in India's Digital Payments Revolution. Rahul has over two decades of experience in embedded systems, enterprise software development, e-commerce platforms, and mobile applications. Prior to PhonePe, he was the VP of Engineering at Flipkart, where he was in charge of developing the best-in-class e-commerce logistics supply chain system. He talks about his entrepreneurial journey, learnings from Flipkart days and the idea behind PhonePe. He deep down on being mobile native and what challenges they face in managing scale, millions of transitions and regulations that arise for fintech platforms. Great watch for everyone who wanted to understand the UPI ecosystem and PhonePe's case study. Rahul also shares about the work culture at PhonePe, expanding in new markets, innovations that they plan and the qualities of a great software engineer. He also talks about the user life cycle, design principles and other verticals like insurance, investment, bill payments etc in which PhonePe is expanding to create the impact in driving UPI's popularity by offering a user-friendly and intuitive platform that integrates seamlessly with the UPI ecosystem for digital payments. ScalerPod by Scaler is a one-of-a-kind podcast for engineers and tech enthusiasts. Our host Arnav Gupta talks to the leaders of the biggest tech companies from India and around the globe about the software engineering challenges they are solving and the products they are building for scale!
Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:27 A Day in His Life 04:20 His Journey - College Days to PhonePe 11:09 Music Streaming, Flipkart's Flyte and Retro Talks 17:23 Being VP of Engineering at Flipkart(Ekart), Logistics and his Learnings 20:01 Idea Behind PhonePe and How PhonePe Started? 23:33 On Phonepe's acquisition by Flipkart 26:38 Early Days of UPI and Digital Payments in India 32:38 PhonePe's Tech Stack and Choices 38:54 On being Mobile Native and Managing User Interactions 41:35 Decoding Digital Payments, UPI and Future Ahead 47:56 Understanding PhonePe Wallet 51:33 Handling Scale, Mobile App and Innovations 58:23 Thoughts on Cross-Platform Integrations 1:00:36 Organisation Structure, Pods and Qualities of Great Engineers 1:06:33 Regulatory Issues and How PhonePe tackle these Challenges 1:14:18 Onboarding Rituals at PhonePe and PhonePe University 1:17:38 Will PhonePe become a Bank? 1:21:58 Opportunities for Digital Payment Platforms 1:25:21 AI in Fintech and Thoughts on ChatGPT 1:28:09 Outro
#PhonePe #UPI #Fintech #Scaler #ScalerPod
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