According to reports from Business Standard, Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce platform by market share, is pushing deeper into payments and financial services as it seeks new revenue streams and tighter margins ahead of a potential initial public offering (IPO) by next year or later. The Walmart-owned company is betting that improvements in payment success rates, biometric authentication and loyalty programmes can simultaneously drive top-line growth and reduce costs — a dual mandate that reflects the pressures facing a maturing consumer internet business.
As reported by Business Standard, Flipkart Internet, the marketplace arm of the company, reported revenue of ₹20,493 crore in FY25, representing a 14% increase over the previous year. Net losses narrowed 37% to ₹1,494 crore, according to regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies. India's e-commerce market could nearly triple to between $174 billion and $214 billion by fiscal 2030, from about $70 billion in fiscal 2025, according to ICICI Securities. Flipkart accounted for an estimated 50-60% of industry gross merchandise value (GMV) and led the market in monthly active users, with roughly 220 million to 240 million users, according to the same report.
According to Business Standard, Gaurav Arora, vice-president, payments and SuperCoins, Flipkart, said payments have become one of the company's top three or four growth levers, with every one-percentage-point gain in payment completion rates translating directly into equivalent top-line growth. The company is focusing on biometric authentication through partnerships with PayU and Axis Bank, with the ambition that a large share of repeat customers will adopt biometric payments over time. Based on Flipkart's early observations, removing the OTP authentication step has improved payment success rates by 700-800 basis points, as about 9-10% of users drop off at the OTP stage due to poor network connectivity, delayed delivery and app-switching.
As reported by Business Standard, Flipkart is working to make SuperCoins a ubiquitous currency that rewards customers wherever they transact, rather than only on its own platform. The company has partnered with Uber, allowing customers who link their Flipkart accounts to earn 4% SuperCoins on every ride. Flipkart has also expanded the programme to airline partners, including Air India and Etihad Airways, and plans to continue growing the ecosystem. Outlining his priorities for the next one to two years, Arora said the company's ambition is to build India's leading loyalty ecosystem.
According to Business Standard, the broader Flipkart Group, including subsidiaries such as Myntra, achieved $30 billion in GMV in calendar year 2025, up from $15 billion in 2020. Arora said the rise of agentic commerce will require payments to become nearly invisible within conversational and AI-driven experiences, and that biometrics are central to making that possible. Addressing concerns about credit-on-UPI, micro-credit and buy-now-pay-later offerings potentially leading to over-leveraging among lower-income consumers, Arora noted that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has taken steps to mitigate such risks through building unified platforms that give lenders greater visibility into customer financial profiles.
