PhonePe, India’s leading digital payments firm, has paused its IPO plans due to geopolitical tensions and stock market volatility.
The Bengaluru-based company announced on Monday that it has delayed its IPO plans but remains dedicated to going public when market conditions are suitable. This decision follows less than two months after the fintech submitted an updated IPO prospectus, aiming for a listing on Indian stock exchanges later this year.
Rising tensions in the Middle East have unsettled global financial markets and elevated oil prices, leading investors to withdraw from stock markets. India’s benchmark indexes, the Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex, have each dropped about 9% in the past month, with hundreds of Indian stocks having experienced double-digit declines since the conflict began on February 28.
In January 2023, PhonePe was valued at around $12 billion and was targeting a market capitalization of approximately $15 billion in its IPO, potentially raising up to $1.5 billion.
Recently, investment bankers working with PhonePe on its IPO recommended reducing its valuation expectations to around $9 billion, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
PhonePe stated that any suggestions that the IPO is delayed due to valuation issues are “baseless.”
“We paused the process solely because of current market conditions, which are unrelated to PhonePe,” a company spokesperson mentioned in an emailed statement.
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PhonePe’s IPO was anticipated to provide an exit for several early investors. According to its IPO filing, Tiger Global and Microsoft planned to sell their entire stakes, and majority owner Walmart intended to offload up to 45.9 million shares, or about 9% of the company, while maintaining control.
Established in 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe was acquired by e-commerce giant Flipkart a year later and has since evolved into India’s top digital payments platform. The company leads the Indian government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem in transaction volumes, surpassing Google Pay.
In February 2026, PhonePe processed approximately 9.3 billion transactions worth about ₹13.1 trillion (around $141.9 billion), compared to Google Pay’s 6.8 billion transactions worth approximately ₹9 trillion (around $97.8 billion), according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
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