PhonePe Launches App Store Localized for India, Allowing Third-Party Payments

PhonePe has launched an Android app store that offers app discovery in 12 Indian languages that cater to 95% of the country’s population.

This new Indus Appstore provides Indian consumers with access to more than 200,000 mobile apps and games across 45 categories, the FinTech company said in a Wednesday (Feb. 21) press release.

“Indus Appstore embodies our commitment to building a truly inclusive digital ecosystem where every Indian user feels at home,” Sameer Nigam, CEO and founder of PhonePe, said in the release.

In addition to being localized, the new app store is designed to be competitive, according to the release.

The Indus Appstore will allow app and game developers to use any third-party payment gateway they choose for in-app billing, the release said. They will not be charged any commission on their use of an external gateway.

While the app store will introduce its own in-app billing and catalog solutions at a later date, developers will remain free to use the solutions of their choice, per the release.

In addition, the app store will provide developers with a self-publishing platform, localization services, tools for monitoring and growing their apps, and 24/7 customer support, the release said.

“Indus Appstore challenges the status quo, ushering in an era of more healthy competition in the mobile app marketplace, which in turn should help create a more democratic and vibrant Indian digital ecosystem,” Nigam said in the release.

This new offering joins a PhonePe product lineup that includes its digital payments app that has more than 510 million registered users as well as financial services and a hyperlocal eCommerce platform, according to the release.

In another recent product introduction, PhonePe said in August that it entered the stock broking industry with the launch of Share.Market. This platform is available as a mobile app and a dedicated web platform, both of which can be accessed by customers using their PhonePe-linked mobile numbers.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that India logs more digital transactions than any other nation. Fifty-five percent of Indian consumers used a digital wallet to pay for their latest retail purchase, according to the “2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: India Edition,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Cybersource collaboration.