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PhonePe Limited
PhonePe runs a popular Indian mobile payments app that lets people pay shops, send money to friends, and buy things online.
PhonePe is India's biggest mobile payments app. You link your bank account to it, then use your phone to pay a shopkeeper by scanning a QR code, send money to a friend, pay a bill, or buy a train ticket. For millions of Indians, it has become the everyday way to move money without cash or a card.
The app sits on a government-built system called UPI, which lets banks talk to each other instantly and for almost nothing. PhonePe is the largest player on that rail, handling a huge share of all UPI payments. Here is the odd part: PhonePe usually does not charge you to pay a merchant. It makes money elsewhere — mainly by selling ads and promotions inside the app, earning a small fee when customers pay through it for things like insurance or travel bookings, and taking a commission on some online merchant transactions. The payments themselves are mostly the hook that brings people in; the money comes from what PhonePe sells them once they are there. That has been a rough trade. PhonePe has grown fast but has long lost money, because it spends heavily to stay on top and the core payment service barely earns anything. It is now pushing into lending, insurance, and wealth products to turn its giant user base into actual profit, and building out its app store and other services. It is owned by Walmart-backed Flipkart, is based in Bengaluru, and in 2023 it moved its headquarters to India from Singapore. CEO and co-founder Sameer Nigam has publicly clashed with the government over UPI's rules, which cap how much the system can charge.
PhonePe's strength is its sheer scale and habit: hundreds of millions of people open it every month. Its weakness is that scale has not yet translated into steady profit, and it depends heavily on a government payment system whose economics it does not control. Competitors like Alphabet's Google Pay and Paytm fight it for the same taps. The bet is that owning the everyday payment habit will eventually let PhonePe sell enough other financial products to make the whole thing pay.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
PhonePe and Google Pay now handle 79% of UPI payments, slipping below 80% for the first time
- 46.3% PhonePe
- 32.7% Google Pay
- 21% Others
Indians use UPI for almost 86% of all digital transactions, and for years two apps handled the vast majority of them. In May 2026 that grip loosened: PhonePe and Google Pay together took 79% of UPI volumes. PhonePe alone still leads at 46.3%, but rules capping any single app's share at 30% by the end of 2026 could reshape how it earns money from payments. Source: The Economic Times / NPCI data, data from 2026
Timeline
Three Founders Bet on UPI
In late 2015, Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer started PhonePe with a simple but sharp bet: India was about to build a new payment system called UPI, and whoever moved first on it could win big. Most people saw UPI as a nice government project. The founders saw a highway being built for money, and they wanted to own the on-ramp.
Flipkart Buys PhonePe
PhonePe needed money and users, so Flipkart bought it. That backing gave it resources and a huge built-in audience. Soon after, in 2016, PhonePe launched its UPI app, making it one of the first players on the new rails.
Beyond Payments into Insurance and Funds
Payments alone are a thin business, so PhonePe pushed into insurance and mutual funds. That moved it from simply moving money to selling financial products, a step that mattered for long-term growth.
PhonePe Splits from Flipkart and Moves Home
PhonePe became independent from Flipkart, freeing it to chart its own path. It also shifted its legal home from Singapore to India, tidying itself up for growth and a future public listing. The move told everyone the company was thinking about going public someday.
PhonePe Takes On the Play Store
PhonePe launched the Indus Appstore to compete with Google's Play Store. With hundreds of thousands of apps in a dozen languages, it signaled that PhonePe no longer saw itself as just a payments app. It was reaching for a bigger role in how Indians use their phones.
PhonePe Becomes a Public Limited Company
PhonePe changed from a private company to PhonePe Limited, a formal step toward an initial public offering. The paperwork was boring, but the message was not: the company was getting ready to sell shares to the public.
PhonePe Pauses Its Listing
When it came time to actually list, PhonePe held back, pointing to geopolitical conflicts and shaky markets. CEO Sameer Nigam said the company still wants to list in India and will go ahead once things calm down. The ambition stayed; only the timing slipped.