The Walmart-backed company is readying preliminary documents for an initial public offering (IPO) that could raise up to $1.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported Monday (June 23), citing sources familiar with the matter.
Those sources said the deal would value PhonePe at around $15 billion, with the company aiming to file a draft red herring prospectus for the listing as soon as August.
According to the report, PhonePe has more than 610 million registered users and handles 340 million rupees of transactions per day. The company raised $100 million in February of 2023, valuing it at $12 billion. Walmart helped the company raise another $200 million weeks later.
A spokesperson for PhonePe declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS.
Now the largest payments platform in India, PhonePe was founded in 2015, and was acquired by Flipkart, an India-based eCommerce company that was itself owned by Walmart, a year later.
The two Indian companies severed their relationship in 2022, a mutual decision they said would let their businesses grow independently, with Walmart remaining the majority shareholder for both firms.
India has been on a “digital payments journey” for almost two decades, as PYMNTS has written.
“The process was marked by key milestones like the introduction of the instant Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in 2016,” that report said. “The 2016 demonetization further accelerated the transition to digital payments, leveraging the existing trend of Indian citizens using mobile phones for various transactions.”
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has illustrated the popularity of that digital wallets in India, the preferred payment method for 55% of retail purchases.
It’s part of a broader embrace of digital wallets around the world, as noted here earlier this month. In the 11 countries surveyed by PYMNTS Intelligence representing half of global GDP, mobile wallets fueled 35% of online transactions and 21% of in-store transactions in 2024.
That marks significant growth since 2022, with in-store digital wallet payments rising by 10.9% and online usage growing 5.2%.
“While not yet the dominant payment method, the momentum of mobile wallets signals that embracing mobile-first behaviors is now essential for businesses,” PYMNTS wrote in advance of new research for the “How the World Does Digital” series.
“Why the change? Consumers increasingly value mobile wallets for their faster checkout experiences, biometric security and embedded rewards.”