Fact Check: Truth Behind PhonePe Offering Rs 696 Cashback During IPL 2025

Multiple social media users shared a post claiming that PhonePe was offering a Rs 696 cashback during the Indian Premier League season. However, an investigation by the PTI Fact Check Desk found that the post was fake. PhonePe had not announced any such cashback offer, and the links in the post led to fraudulent, non-functional pages.

Claim

On March 22, a Facebook user going by the name 'Ipl-Hub' shared a post about PhonePe claiming that it is offering a cashback of Rs 696 this IPL season. The post also shared a link where the user had to register to avail of the cashback.

The text in the post, which garnered 979 likes, originally in Hindi, read: "This IPL PhonePe is giving Rs 696 free cashback."

Here is the link, and below is a screenshot of the same.

Investigation

The Desk ran the viral post through the InVid tool and extracted multiple keyframes. Running one of the keyframes through Google Lens, the Desk found multiple users had shared it with similar claims.

Two such posts can be viewed here and here

To verify the claim, the Desk checked the link to the viral post that read Get.Offer.com, which does not carry the company's name. Below is a screenshot highlighting the same.

In the next part of the investigation, after the Desk linked on the given link, it led us to a website called 'Summers Gift', which was inaccessible at the time of writing this report.

Below is a screenshot highlighting the same. 

The Desk then checked PhonePe's actual domain registration, which showed that the company's website was registered in 2015, through the domain registration website GoDaddy.

Here is the link to the website, and below is a screenshot of the same.

For further verification, we scanned all of PhonePe's social media handles to check whether they had launched any such cashback scheme, but the search did not yield any results mentioning the claim made in the viral post.

Conducting a customised keyword search, the Desk came across a blog on PhonePe's official website, whose headline read: "Stay alert from Cashback frauds!" The blog mentioned that these links and social media pages are cleverly designed to resemble PhonePe's official Website and logo to trick you into believing that the offer is genuine. It added that PhonePe does not offer Cashback or rewards over phone calls or links.

"No additional action is needed from you to claim or accept Cashback. PhonePe does not offer Cashback or rewards for phone calls or links. Any URLs, social media posts or phone calls promising Cashback are misleading," the blog read.

Here is the link, and below is a screenshot of the same.

Subsequently, the Desk concluded that PhonePe had not launched any cashback offer for the ongoing IPL season.

Claim

PhonePe launches a cashback scheme for the ongoing IPL season.

Fact

The viral post is misleading, as PhonePe did not launch any cashback offer for the ongoing IPL season.

Conclusion

Several social media users shared a post in the name of PhonePe claiming that it offers a cashback of Rs 696 this IPL season. In its investigation, the Desk found that the viral post was misleading, as PhonePe did not launch any cashback offer for the ongoing IPL season. Moreover, the links shared led to now-defunct websites or more fraudulent pages.

(This story was originally published by Press Trust Of India, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)