Walmart-backed digital payments service provider PhonePe is looking to expand into financial services with an eye to reach a user base of 500 million.
The payments major, which has 314 million registered users and a 46 per cent market share in UPI payments according to NPCI data, has recently secured an insurance broking licence and an account aggregator licence from the RBI for consent-based financial data sharing.
PhonePe has also applied for a payments aggregator license and is expecting a stock broking licence.
“The focus area now is the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) category. Since the start of the pandemic we have been focussing on insurance distribution.
We have started our mutual fund platform. We are looking at stock broking and also want to become an account aggregator,” said Rahul Chari, CTO and co-founder of PhonePe.
“We are currently at 300 million plus user base. The next 200 million users are largely expected from smaller locations and beyond and achieving this will be a great milestone,” he said, adding that the aim is not to focus on payments only but have financial services at scale.
The company will also evaluate lending activities as part of its financial services ambition but a foray into the category may not be immediate, Chari said.
Last year PhonePe had announced a partial spinoff from Flipkart and raised $700 million in a round valuing the company at $5.5 billion.
“With the partial spinoff and $700 million infusion, we currently have more than enough capital in the medium-term. We also have patient investors who see the long term opportunity,” said Chari.
Over the past one-and-a-half years, Chari said, PhonePe has been able to control spending while continuing to invest, Payments as a standalone business is expected to be profitable soon.
PhonePe has clocked a total of 1492.09 million transactions in July, valued at Rs 2.8 lakh crore on the UPI platform.
Nearly 80 per cent of the transactions are from smaller cities and beyond.
PhonePe is in no hurry to launch its IPO and will go public “when it makes sense” for the company, even as a number of Indian internet companies, including rival Paytm, line up to mark their debut on Dalal Street in the coming months.
The company has just “scratched the surface” when it comes to financial services and is excited about the prospects in multiple verticals like insurance, PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam told PTI.
Amazon Pay
The UPI based online payments services of global e-commerce major Amazon has reached 5 crore customers. Amazon Pay said that in the last one year, over 75 per cent of its customers have come from the smaller cities.
