PhonePe, India’s largest digital payments platform, has put its initial public offering plans on hold. The company cites ongoing geopolitical tensions and a volatile stock market as the reasons for this decision. On Monday, the Bengaluru-based firm stated that while it has paused the process, it remains committed to going public once market conditions improve.
This move comes less than two months after the fintech company filed an updated IPO prospectus, targeting a listing on Indian stock exchanges later this year. Escalating tensions in the Middle East have unsettled global financial markets and driven oil prices higher, leading investors to retreat from equities. India’s benchmark equity indexes, the Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex, have each fallen approximately 9% over the past month, with hundreds of Indian stocks recording double-digit declines since the conflict intensified in late February.
Valued at about $12 billion in January 2023, PhonePe was targeting a market capitalization of around $15 billion in its IPO, which could have raised up to $1.5 billion. However, more recently, investment bankers working on the IPO had suggested lowering valuation expectations to about $9 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter. PhonePe has stated that any claims the IPO pause is due to valuation concerns are baseless. A company spokesperson emphasized the decision was solely due to external market conditions unrelated to PhonePe itself.
The IPO was expected to provide an exit for several early investors. According to its filing, Tiger Global and Microsoft were set to sell their entire stakes. Majority owner Walmart planned to offload up to 45.9 million shares, or about 9% of the company, while retaining control.
Founded in 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe was acquired by e-commerce giant Flipkart a year later. It has since grown to become India’s largest digital payments platform. The company leads the government-backed Unified Payments Interface ecosystem in transaction volumes, ahead of Google Pay. In February 2026, PhonePe processed about 9.3 billion transactions worth roughly 13.1 trillion rupees, compared to Google Pay’s 6.8 billion transactions worth around 9 trillion rupees, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India.
Flipkart spun PhonePe out into a separate company in 2022, though Walmart remained the fintech’s biggest shareholder. Starting as a digital payments platform, PhonePe has expanded into financial services, offering stockbroking and mutual fund investments, as well as an Android app store positioned as an alternative to Google’s Play Store.
For the six months ended September 2025, PhonePe’s revenue from operations rose 22% to 39.19 billion rupees from a year earlier, as per its prospectus. The company’s loss widened to 14.44 billion rupees from 12.03 billion rupees a year earlier, as it continued to invest in expanding its services.