New Delhi — PhonePe Founder and CEO Sameer Nigam outlined the company’s vision for the next decade of financial inclusion in India at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, highlighting plans to expand digital payments, savings, credit and business tools.
Nigam said PhonePe’s strategy is centered on making financial services accessible across income levels and removing barriers that have traditionally kept people outside the digital economy.
“True progress isn’t measured by how fast the top 10 per cent move– it is measured by whether we leave anyone behind. Over the past decade, PhonePe has operated as a technology pioneer charting India’s progress. Every product across our ecosystem has been thoughtfully crafted to honour our core purpose–removing friction from progress and ensuring that financial security and growth belong to everyone,” Nigam said.
“Real financial inclusion was never about building a product based on socio-economic strata. It’s about building one system, flexible enough to meet every Indian exactly where they are,” he added.
Nigam said PhonePe has worked with the National Payments Corporation of India to address barriers involving smartphones, bank accounts and cross-border payments.
He highlighted UPI 123Pay, which allows feature phone users to make UPI payments without internet access through SMS, interactive voice response, missed calls and voice-based technology. More than 800,000 enabled devices have already been shipped in partnership with device manufacturers, he said.
Nigam also pointed to UPI Circle, which allows primary account holders to delegate spending to dependents. PhonePe has also expanded UPI payments for travelers in countries including Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, France and Nepal, while enabling payments for more than 35 million nonresident Indians through NRE and NRO accounts.
On savings and investments, Nigam discussed what PhonePe calls its “Sachetization Philosophy,” aimed at turning larger financial commitments into smaller, more frequent transactions.
PhonePe Daily FD allows users to begin a fixed deposit with as little as Rs 100 per day, while daily investments in gold, silver and mutual fund systematic investment plans can start at Rs 10.
Nigam also introduced CRISP, a tool designed to provide users with real-time market information. PhonePe’s investment platform also supports high-net-worth customers making lump-sum investments and trading futures and options.
On credit, Nigam said PhonePe’s artificial intelligence-driven underwriting technology can enable loan disbursements in as little as 2.5 minutes.
“A vegetable vendor who has made Rs 800 in disciplined daily sales for five straight years, with a payments trail to prove it, remains nearly invisible to traditional credit scoring,” he said.
PhonePe is using merchants’ daily settlement histories to assess creditworthiness for automated daily-repayment loans, Nigam said.
The company is also extending credit to customers without previous credit scores through products including the Wish Credit Card, which allows first-time borrowers to begin building credit using a fixed deposit. PhonePe also offers RuPay credit cards on UPI in partnership with SBI and HDFC.
Nigam also highlighted tools aimed at helping merchants grow their businesses, including a rebuilt PhonePe Business App offering access to hyperlocal online advertising, personalized market insights and no-code payment setups.
The broader merchant ecosystem includes SmartConnect and SmartStore, physical-store technologies and payment gateway tools. PhonePe is also using AI-driven voice synthesis to provide personalized audio payment alerts in celebrity voices.
Nigam concluded by presenting PhonePe Pulse Pro, a hyperlocal intelligence platform powered by more than 11 billion monthly transactions. The platform provides insights mapped to areas as small as a 40-square-meter cell to help businesses and policymakers make growth decisions. (Source: IANS)
