PhonePe planning foray into stockbroking business: Report

PhonePe grabbed 44 percent of the UPI market by facilitating 1.19 billion transactions worth Rs 2.31 lakh crore in March 2021 (Image Source: Shutterstock)

PhonePe plans to enter India’s 'super competitive' stockbroking business and is awaiting license for the same from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), sources told The Economic Times.

Sources told the paper the Walmart-owned fintech startup would 'encourage' customers to divert unused wallet funds towards markets, using its existing base to compete for market share against established players in the industry.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

One source added that PhonePe’s goal was to “become a full-fledged diversified financial services player”, adding that the company would be growing its merchant, investments and insurance services in the coming years.

They added that the company had “no immediate plans to enter the lending market”.

PhonePe spokesperson did not respond to queries, the report said.

Notably, PhonePe’s payments rival Paytm has already received its stockbroking license from SEBI. Sources told the paper there were “at least two more fintech companies with plans to enter stock broking”.

Relying on its existing customer base may not be an unfounded strategy – PhonePe grabbed 44 percent of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) market by facilitating 1.19 billion UPI transactions worth Rs 2.31 lakh crore in March, compared to closest rival Google Pay’s 35 percent share and 957 million transactions.

Notably, the new developments comes as UPI asked PhonePe to 'moderate' its volumes on UPI and comply with new third-party application rules of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which requires players to have no more than 30 percent market share each.

In terms of financial services, the company similarly ventured into the mutual funds (MF) space in 2019 – where it similarly targeted existing customer base; besides the insurance and savings sectors.