PhonePe has long aspired to go public, excited to take early steps towards IPO, says Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. PhonePe was valued at around $12 billion in its last private fundraising. The Bengaluru-based company is the country’s largest digital payments player with close to 48 percent market share in Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the real-time mobile payments platform run by National Payments Corporation of India. Google Pay is the second largest player with around 37 percent of the market. The payments firm’s revenue growth has been encouraging and could have been a deciding factor for the company to go ahead with the IPO plan. The latest move is an indication that the company has been able to manage its profitability during the current fiscal as well. The company has also been grappling with uncertainty on the UPI market share cap. NPCI has been trying hard to encourage other fintech apps to make UPI more competitive to dislodge the duopoly. However, NPCI was forced to extend the deadline twice, for a period of two years as the implementation plan would likely inconvenience customers with the latest being on December 31, 2024.
