Walmart-backed PhonePe gets regulatory approval for Indian IPO, sources say

By Jaspreet Kalra

Jan 20 (Reuters) – Walmart-backed Indian payments firm PhonePe has received regulatory approval for its stock market listing after confidentially filing for an initial public offering in September, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Walmart, Microsoft and Tiger Global are expected to offload part of their shareholdings in the offering, the sources said. They declined to be identified as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

PhonePe declined to comment. Walmart, Microsoft and Tiger Global did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

PhonePe’s IPO plan comes amid buoyant Indian primary markets, where fundraising hit a record high in 2025.

The firm is aiming to list by mid-2026, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters in September. PhonePe was valued at $12 billion in 2023 when it raised capital from private markets.

Founded in 2015, the company is the top payments platform on India’s popular unified payments interface (UPI), with more than 45% market share by volume as of December 2025.

It processed 9.8 billion of the 21.6 billion UPI transactions in August, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India.

PhonePe has more than 600 million registered users and offers payment solutions to nearly 50 million merchants.

India in 2024 delayed the rollout of market-share caps on UPI, a boost for PhonePe and rival Google Pay, which dominate the platform.

In a regulatory filing ahead of the IPO, PhonePe said its losses narrowed to 17.2 billion rupees ($189 million) in the year ended March 2025, from 19.96 billion rupees a year earlier.

($1 = 90.9410 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Jaspreet Kalra and Komal Salecha in Bengaluru. Editing by Louise Heavens and Mark Potter)