Payments platform PhonePe is looking to expand aggressively into the fintech sector. The payments company looking to reach a userbase of 500 million for its consolidated services. The company is already India’s leading payments platform with 314 million registered users and 46 percent of the market share for UPI payments, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The NCPI operates digital payments channels like UPI, IMPS and BBPS.

The company has recently acquired an insurance broking and an account aggregator licence from the Reserve Bank of India. With the insurance broking licence, the company will be able to sell insurances to its users and the account aggregator licence will allow the company to share consented financial data.

“The focus area now is the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) category. Since the start of the pandemic we have been focussing on insurance distribution. We have started our mutual fund platform. We are looking at stockbroking and also want to become an account aggregator,” said Rahul Chari, CTO and co-founder of PhonePe.

The company will onboard the majority of its next 200 million customers through smaller locations, which are fast becoming demand hubs for financial services and products. PhonePe might also look to enter the lending sector, though plans for the same are not of the immediate nature, added Chari.

But as the company expands, the Walmart-owned company plans of international expansion in countries like Mexico and Singapore to quickly start turning profitable. The company expects its payments business to be profitable soon, and the new ventures to quickly turn to the green as well.

“Account aggregators have to pay for themselves. It is a standalone business where you charge the Financial Information Users (FIUs). The reason we got it was to get in very early to make sure the ecosystem actually sustained itself, like UPI. You need a few accelerants. We were one of the accelerants for UPI. We will be an accelerant for account aggregators. We will not just build for PhonePe, but for anyone in the market,” PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam told MoneyControl.

“On the consumer or merchant side, our aspirations are to tear open the sectors we get into in the financial inclusion space — small ticket, very large volume, SIPs, sachet insurance etc. I think there’s a lot of money in it if you can crack it. I am pretty bullish about what we can do there,” Nigam added.

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)