Walmart-backed PhonePe delays IPO plans amid global market volatility

PhonePe, India’s largest digital payments platform, has decided to delay its plans to go public, pointing to geopolitical tensions and ongoing instability in global markets.

On Monday, the Bengaluru-headquartered fintech confirmed that it has paused its IPO process for now, while reiterating its intention to proceed with a public listing once market conditions stabilise. The announcement comes less than two months after the company submitted an updated prospectus, aiming to list on Indian stock exchanges later this year.

Rising tensions in the Middle East have unsettled financial markets worldwide, driving up oil prices and prompting investors to pull back from equities. In India, benchmark indices such as the Nifty 50 and the BSE Sensex have both declined by around 9% over the past month, while hundreds of stocks have recorded double-digit losses since the conflict began on February 28.

PhonePe, which was valued at approximately $12 billion in January 2023, had targeted a valuation of about $15 billion for its IPO, with plans to raise to $1.5 billion. However, more recent discussions among investment bankers involved in the offering suggested that expectations might need to be revised downward to around $9 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company dismissed suggestions that valuation concerns were behind the delay, calling such claims “baseless.”

“We paused the process only because of the current market conditions, which are unrelated to PhonePe,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The IPO was expected to provide liquidity for several early investors. As outlined in its filing, Tiger Global and Microsoft were planning to exit their positions entirely, while Walmart — the company’s largest shareholder — intended to sell up to 45.9 million shares, representing about 9% of its stake, while retaining overall control.

Founded in 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe was acquired by Flipkart within a year of its launch and has since evolved into India’s leading digital payments service. The platform currently dominates transaction volumes on the government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI), surpassing competitors like Google Pay.

In February 2026, PhonePe processed roughly 9.3 billion transactions with a total value of around ₹13.1 trillion (approximately $141.9 billion). In comparison, Google Pay handled about 6.8 billion transactions worth nearly ₹9 trillion (around $97.8 billion), based on figures from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Flipkart spun off PhonePe as a separate entity in 2022, though Walmart has remained its largest shareholder. Initially focused on digital payments, the company has since diversified into broader financial services, including stockbroking and mutual fund investments. It has also launched an Android app marketplace positioned as an alternative to Google’s Play Store.

From a financial standpoint, PhonePe has continued to grow its revenue while investing heavily in expansion. In the six months ended September 2025, the company reported a 22% increase in operating revenue to ₹39.19 billion (about $424.4 million), up from the same period a year earlier, according to its prospectus. At the same time, its losses widened to ₹14.44 billion (around $156.4 million), up from ₹12.03 billion (approximately $130.4 million) in the previous year, reflecting ongoing spending to scale its services.