PhonePe eyes AMC licence to sell mutual funds: Report

Walmart-backed payments platform PhonePe is mulling applying for an Asset Management Company (AMC) licence to sell its mutual funds, its co-founder and CEO Sameer Nigam told The Economic Times.

The move will help PhonePe build a wider financial services business beyond its payments business. In the April-June quarter of this year, PhonePe clocked over 3.94 billion transactions.

Even though Nigam did not disclose the timeline for the application, he hinted that PhonePe had a good chance of getting there at some point in time. “We may apply for a mutual funds licence. I think we will be able to get there at some point. I fancy a chance of getting there,” Nigam told the publication.

According to the report, PhonePe is eyeing financial services market in tier 3 and tier 4 towns, where a majority of its users are based.

Currently, PhonePe sells mutual funds of other companies on its platform. “We just launched with SIPs using e-mandates on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). We have seen an explosion of new SIPs, though small-ticket size. We are seeing early product match,” he said on the adoption of financial services products among PhonePe users.

The digital payments platforms also sells insurance online with a limited insurance ‘corporate agent’ licence, which restricts it to partner with only three insurance companies per category.

Also Read — Zerodha gets in-principle approval to launch mutual fund, says Nithin Kamath

This comes days after broking firm Zerodha's CEO Nithin Kamath announced that it has received in-principle approval from capital markets regulator Sebi to set up an asset management company.

Meanhwile, Flipkart cofounder Sachin Bansal's Navi, which has launched its AMC, has also applied to Sebi to launch as many as 10 new mutual funds.