PhonePe, BharatPe move to High Court over ‘Pe’

2 leading digital payment companies — PhonePe (endorsed by Aamir Khan), & BharatPe (by Salman Khan) — are fighting in the Delhi HC over the usage of ‘Pe’ (pronounced as “Pay”) in their app names, with the former claiming trademark rights over it.

News Agency has seen court documents where the Walmart-owned Flipkart’s PhonePe sought an injunction order in a lawsuit against BharatPe. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal’s son Amit Sibal is representing the Bengaluru-based Phone-Pe, which was recently valued at more than $7 billion by Morgan Stanley. The Delhi-based BharatPe, over the last 9 months, has emerged as one of the fastest growing merchant payment companies, an area PhonePe is expanding aggressively into.

While the court didn't grant an injunction on PhonePe’s original appeal, the matter is set to be heard on Oct 9, the documents showed. The lawsuit was 1^st filed in May, but the matter hasn't been reported before. BharatPe has raised over $65 million in the last 6 months from investors like United States-based Ribbit Capital & Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital.

Interestingly, PhonePe & BharatPe had been arguing among themselves over the matter since Aug 2018, before the Bengaluru-based company moved the court. “The present suit has been filed seeking an injunction restraining infringement of trademark, passing off, damages, etc,” the court filings said. In this case, PhonePe has challenged the usage of Pe as suffix in BharatPe’s name in English as well as in Hindi — both in text & graphic description.

“They (PhonePe) had sent a legal notice to BharatPe last year & the latter changed the logo & colour in its original format. But that didn't solve the issue, & both are now fighting it out in the court,” a person aware of the goings-on said.

Both PhonePe & BharatPe are leading players on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform. According to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) data sourced from industry executives, Bharat-Pe processed peer-to-merchant transactions to the tune of $76 million in value last month on Unified Payments Interface (UPI). PhonePe said it did merchant transactions worth $1 billion, including Unified Payments Interface (UPI) & cards.

“PhonePe has approached the honourable Delhi HC to protect its brand trademarks, which we believe are being infringed. Considering the matter is sub judice, PhonePe would like to refrain from commenting beyond this,” a PhonePe spokesperson said in an e-mailed response. BharatPe co-founder & chief executive officer (CEO) Ashneer Grover declined to comment on the matter.

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