PhonePe Founder and CEO Sameer Nigam on 9 September 2026 delivered a sweeping keynote at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 in New Delhi, outlining the company's strategic roadmap for the next decade — one centred on dismantling the structural barriers that have historically kept hundreds of millions of Indians out of the formal financial system. The address marked a decade of PhonePe's operations and set out an ambitious agenda spanning credit access, wealth democratisation, and merchant empowerment.

Inclusive Growth as the Core Philosophy

Nigam opened by anchoring PhonePe's next chapter in a philosophy of universal access. “True progress isn’t measured by how fast the top 10 per cent move – it is measured by whether we leave anyone behind,” he said. He added that “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.”

This framing positions PhonePe not merely as a payments app but as infrastructure for economic participation — a distinction that carries weight as India’s digital financial ecosystem matures beyond urban, smartphone-owning demographics.

Breaking the Smartphone and Border Barriers

A significant portion of the keynote addressed the hardware barrier — the reality that over 20 crore feature phone users remain largely excluded from digital payments. Nigam highlighted the rollout of UPI 123Pay, a non-internet technology stack that uses SMS, IVR, missed-call, and voice-based channels to bring UPI functionality directly to feature phones. According to Nigam, over 8 lakh enabled devices have already been shipped in partnership with leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

He also spotlighted UPI Circle, which allows primary account holders to safely delegate spending authority to dependents, effectively making digital payments a household-level habit rather than an individual one. On the cross-border front, PhonePe has expanded UPI access for travellers in Singapore, the UAE, France, and Nepal, while enabling seamless payments for over 3.5 crore NRIs through NRE and NRO accounts.

Sachetisation of Wealth and Credit

Nigam introduced what he called PhonePe’s ‘Sachetization Philosophy’ — drawing a deliberate parallel to the Rs 2 shampoo sachet that made personal care accessible to low-income consumers. Applied to finance, this means converting large, intimidating financial commitments into small, everyday habits. Flagship products include the PhonePe Daily FD, which allows users to open a bank-grade Fixed Deposit starting at just Rs 100 per day, alongside daily Gold, Silver, and Mutual Fund SIPs that begin at as little as Rs 10.

He also introduced CRISP, a tool designed to give retail investors real-time market clarity, while noting that the platform simultaneously scales to serve High Net Worth (HNW) users with lump-sum investments and futures-and-options (F&O) trading — a rare attempt to serve both ends of the wealth spectrum on a single platform.

On credit, Nigam described how PhonePe’s AI-driven underwriting now enables loan disbursals in just 2.5 minutes. He underscored the systemic gap this addresses: “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.” PhonePe is using daily settlement history as a de facto credit score for automated, daily-repayment merchant loans. The newly introduced Wish Credit Card targets first-time borrowers, allowing them to build credit starting from a simple fixed deposit, while premium offerings include RuPay Credit Cards on UPI in partnership with SBI and HDFC.

Merchant Ecosystem and Hyperlocal Intelligence

Nigam unveiled a suite of tools aimed at the merchant economy, anchored by a rebuilt PhonePe Business App that serves as a gateway to hyperlocal online advertising, personalised market insights, and no-code payment setups. The ecosystem encompasses SmartConnect, SmartStore, physical store innovations, and PhonePe Payment Gateway upgrades — including a data-driven CRM, loyalty engines, smart speakers, and AI-powered audio alerts that deliver personalised payment notifications in celebrity voices.

Closing the session, Nigam presented PhonePe Pulse Pro, a hyperlocal intelligence platform powered by over 11 billion monthly transactions. The tool maps insights down to a 40-square-metre cell, offering granular data to businesses and policymakers for strategic decision-making — a signal that PhonePe is positioning its transaction data as a public-good resource, not just a commercial asset.

What This Signals for India’s Fintech Landscape

This comes amid intensifying competition in India’s digital payments and neo-banking space, with rivals expanding their own credit and investment verticals. PhonePe’s decade-anniversary roadmap is notable for its breadth — simultaneously targeting feature phone users, daily-wage earners, NRIs, merchants, and HNW investors. Whether the platform can execute across all these segments without diluting product quality will be the defining challenge of its next decade.