PhonePe
“Can India's largest UPI payments app translate 600M consumers and 35M merchants into a vertically integrated, publicly listed financial services conglomerate spanning payments, lending, insurance, and wealth?”
Founded2015
HQBengaluru, Karnataka, India
FoundersSameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, Burzin Engineer
Latest roundIPO (filed UDRHP-I January 2026)
IndustryFintech / Consumer banking
The story
Founded 2015 as FX Mart, rebranded to PhonePe and acquired by Flipkart (then Walmart) — built India's largest UPI payments app with 600M+ users. Has aggressively expanded from a payments app into a multi-product financial services group: insurance broking, wealth/broking (Share.Market), lending marketplace, and an NBFC-Account Aggregator. The current chapter is becoming a public-listed conglomerate (UDRHP filed January 2026) operating as the financial OS for India.
Product timeline
2015
PhonePe founded by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer (originally FX Mart).· founding
2016
Flipkart acquires PhonePe; PhonePe app goes live on UPI.· acquisition
2018
Walmart acquires Flipkart, becoming PhonePe's parent.· acquisition
2023
Launched Account Aggregator services (NBFC-AA license from RBI) via PhonePe Technology Services.· banking
2023
Launched Merchant Lending platform for banks/NBFCs to lend to 35M+ merchants.· lending
2024
Launched Credit Line on UPI for merchant payments.· lending
2025
Launched Share.Market wealth platform and Indus Appstore.· pivot
2026
Filed UDRHP-I draft red herring prospectus for IPO.· ipo
Regulated entities
4
regulatory licences held by PhonePe
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in PhonePe’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
PhonePe Payment Gateway (self-operated)PhonePe Payment Aggregator (self-operated)UPI (self-operated)
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Open banking
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
7 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.