Siddhartha Cavale

BENTONVILLE, Ark. (Reuters) – Initial public offerings of marketplace Flipkart and Walmart’s (NYSE:) digital payments platform PhonePe could take several years, a Walmart executive said.

“We’re looking at this over the next several years,” Walmart executive vice president of corporate affairs Dan Bartlett said on the sidelines of the company’s shareholder meeting near its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., held delayed Thursday evening.

Bartlett told Reuters that Walmart may do PhonePe’s IPO before Flipkart even though Flipkart is a more mature company.

India-based PhonePe is “one of the largest payment platforms” in the country, he said. He cited PhonePe’s connection with India’s Unified Payments instant money transfer system Interface (NASDAQ:) (UPI), which allows users to transfer money between multiple banks without revealing account details.

“There are a lot of processes that need to be put in place before we go public,” Bartlett said, referring to PhonePe. “Of course, the issue of Indian stock exchange versus other stock exchanges” is “under consideration” for future listing, he added.

Walmart’s Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe payments operations in India could be a $100 billion business, fueled by forceful growth, the retailer’s chief financial officer told an investor conference a year ago.

Executives at the time cited the two companies as key factors that could assist Walmart achieve its goal of doubling its gross merchandise volume sold in foreign markets to $200 billion in five years.

In October 2023, PhonePe reported that its consolidated revenue for fiscal year 2023 grew 77% as more customers used its platform to send and receive money in India’s booming digital payments market.

With over 490 million registered users, PhonePe had almost 51% share of transaction value on India’s UPI as of March 2023.