India's digital payments revolution may have been powered by UPI, but for fintech major PhonePe, the next phase of growth is increasingly coming from financial services. According to founder and CEO Sameer Nigam, non-payment businesses such as insurance, lending and wealth management now contribute the majority of the company's revenue, a shift that many observers may not yet fully appreciate.
Speaking to NDTV Profit about the evolution of the platform, Nigam said PhonePe began expanding beyond payments several years ago by introducing savings and investment products. “We started with savings products almost seven or eight years ago with things like DigiGold. We also introduced SIPs and constructed SIPs on gold savings,” he said.
India's cultural affinity for gold made it a natural starting point for digital savings products. Nigam noted that while financial instruments such as gold ETFs exist, they often fail to connect with a large segment of the population. Digital gold products, on the other hand, resonate more strongly with mass-market users.
He further added that from there, PhonePe expanded into mutual fund distribution, enabling systematic investment plans (SIPs) through its app. With more than a quarter of a billion users accessing the platform every month, even a small fraction adopting such services translates into rapid growth. Nigam said the company has become one of the fastest-growing contributors to new SIP registrations in India.
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“What we are seeing in real time is Indians participating in the wealth market, the savings market and the formalised lending market,” he told NDTV Profit, adding that the scale of PhonePe's user base allows even modest adoption rates to build meaningful businesses.
Today, the platform has around 650 million lifetime users and sees roughly 150 million daily users, with more than 100 million conducting transactions every day. The value of money flowing through the platform annually is approaching $2 trillion, reflecting the scale of India's digital payments ecosystem.
However, Nigam emphasised that the company increasingly views itself not just as a payments platform but as a broader financial services utility. Beyond consumers, PhonePe also serves millions of merchants across the country, many of whom are small businesses that historically relied heavily on cash transactions.
Digital infrastructure such as UPI has enabled these businesses to transition into the formal financial ecosystem, generating data that can support services like lending and insurance. According to Nigam, payments data offers insights into income patterns, spending behaviour and risk profiles, helping fintech firms design more accessible financial products.
As PhonePe prepares for its eventual public market debut, Nigam believes the company's long-term opportunity lies in deepening financial participation across India. “When you have hundreds of millions of users, even a sliver of adoption across savings, insurance and lending adds up very fast,” he said.
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