PhonePe’s Strategy to Bring Banking Services to Feature‑Phone Users Highlighted at GFF 2026

New Delhi, September 9 – At the Global FinTech Fest 2026, PhonePe’s chief executive Samir Nigrani announced a dedicated push to bring full banking capabilities to India’s 200 million feature‑phone owners.

Calling the effort a “digital inclusion imperative,” Nigrani explained that the lack of smart‑phone penetration has long prevented a large segment of the population from accessing UPI, payments and credit.

PhonePe’s solution, branded UPI‑123Pay, relies on SMS, IVR and missed‑call technology to deliver the complete UPI experience without a data connection. More than 800,000 low‑cost devices equipped with this capability have already been shipped in partnership with leading manufacturers.

The company also introduced UPI‑Circle, a feature that allows primary account holders to allocate safe‑spending limits to family members, turning everyday purchases into a teaching tool for digital finance.

Beyond domestic rollout, PhonePe expanded UPI to international corridors, enabling seamless cross‑border payments for Indian travelers in Singapore, the UAE, France and Nepal, and supporting over 3.5 million NRIs through simplified NRE/NRO account integrations.

Nigrani highlighted the “Saashekaran” approach that mirrors the affordability of a two‑rupee shampoo sachet. The platform now offers Fope Daily Fixed Deposit, Daily Gold, Silver and mutual‑fund SIPs with entry points as low as ₹100 and ₹10, opening formal saving avenues for daily‑wage earners and micro‑entrepreneurs.

For credit, PhonePe unveiled an AI‑driven underwriting engine that can approve loans within 2.5 minutes, using settlement histories as alternative credit scores. The Vis Credit Card, a newly launched product, helps first‑time borrowers build a credit profile by linking a modest fixed deposit.

The session also showcased a suite of merchant tools, including a refreshed PhonePe Business app, SmartConnect, SmartStore and a hyper‑local ad platform. These solutions provide data‑rich CRM, loyalty programmes, smart‑speaker integration and AI‑powered voice alerts.

PhonePe concluded the presentation with PhonePe Plus Pro, a hyper‑local analytics platform that aggregates data from over 11 billion monthly transactions, delivering actionable insights at a 40‑meter geographic granularity for businesses and regulators alike.