PhonePe

PhonePe is a Bengaluru-headquartered digital payments and financial services company. It was founded in December 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer and acquired by Flipkart in 2016, the year its app went live. Walmart owns Flipkart and holds a majority stake in PhonePe; PhonePe separated from Flipkart in 2022 and moved its domicile to India.

Its business products include PhonePe for Business, which offers UPI QR code acceptance, the SmartSpeaker payment-alert device, card POS terminals, the PhonePe Payment Gateway for online businesses, and merchant lending through partner lenders. Its other businesses include insurance and mutual fund distribution, the Share.Market stock-broking app and the Indus Appstore for Android apps.

UPI payments to merchants carry no fee under current Indian regulations. PhonePe earns merchant revenue through payment gateway fees for cards and other methods, device rentals, lending distribution and advertising. Payment gateway pricing for large merchants is negotiated, and small merchants can sign up for free QR acceptance through the business app.

PhonePe describes itself as India's largest digital payments platform. Sameer Nigam is CEO and Rahul Chari is CTO. In January 2026, PhonePe Limited filed an updated draft red herring prospectus with SEBI for an IPO that would consist entirely of an offer for sale by existing shareholders. The press later reported that the listing had been put on hold because of market volatility. As in the rest of India's UPI market, NPCI rules on market share caps for large apps remain an important regulatory issue for the company.