Walmart, the world's largest retailer, announced that its digital payments subsidiary, PhonePe, has achieved a total payment value (TPV) of $1.3 trillion, as reported by The Economic Times.  

This places the company owned by the American giant, on par with some of the major fintech players in the United States in terms of scale. 

John David Rainey, Walmart's chief financial officer, highlighted that PhonePe's total payment value (TPV) is comparable to leading fintech companies in the U.S., which have market capitalisations exceeding $100 billion.  

He added that PhonePe could emerge as one of the world's top payment companies, particularly outside of China, in the near future. 

In 2018, Walmart acquired the ecommerce company Flipkart, which included the digital payments platform as well. After the acquisition the fintech has been a significant player in India's payment market.   

PhonePe, currently holding a 50 per cent share of India's payments market, attracted substantial investment in 2023. It secured $850 million from investors, including private equity firms such as General Atlantic, Ribbit Capital, and Tiger Global.  

This financial infusion highlights the continued confidence and support from the investment community in PhonePe's growth and potential within the evolving digital payment ecosystem in India. 

Walmart, having contemplated taking Flipkart public for over two years, has not yet finalised a specific timeline for the initial public offering (IPO). Instead, the focus is on enhancing the financial performance of the Indian online retailer, Flipkart.  

Walmart's Chief Financial Officer, John David Rainey, mentioned that both Flipkart and its digital payments arm, PhonePe, are likely to launch IPOs at some point. The company anticipates an improvement in profitability as they move closer to the IPO process.

As these two entities progress toward potential public offerings, efforts to reduce losses are expected to contribute to the overall improvement in the Profit and Loss (P&L) statements, making Flipkart and PhonePe attractive in terms of market capitalisation

In the fiscal year 2023, the fintech reported a consolidated revenue of Rs 2,914 crore. This marked a substantial 77 percent year-on-year increase from its fiscal year 2022 revenue of Rs 1,646 crore. The noteworthy growth in revenue was attributed to the company's expansion in the digital payment segment.