India’s Adani Group has been considering an application for a licence to operate on the country’s public digital payments network and is in talks with banks to finalise plans for a co-branded credit card, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
The plans to dial up consumer businesses came as billionaire Gautam Adani’s ports-to-power conglomerate mulled spending $84 billion in infrastructure over the next decade.
If approved, the group will enter India’s burgeoning digital payments market and compete with incumbents Google Pay and Walmart-backed PhonePe.
India’s payments market is expected to reach $814.43 billion in 2029, from $357.51 billion in 2024, a report by Mordor Intelligence showed.
With a 48.9% market share, PhonePe is the largest UPI app in India, April data showed, followed by Google Pay with a 37.7% share.
The Adani Group did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report.
The group is also in talks to offer online shopping through India’s government-backed public e-commerce platform, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), the report said.
If finalised, the services will be available through Adani’s consumer app Adani One, which was launched in December 2022, the report added.
The conglomerate has been making efforts to recover from a January 2023 report by US short-seller Hindenburg that triggered a sell-off in the group’s listed shares. The report accused the group of stock manipulation and improper use of tax havens – allegations that the group has refuted.
A court-appointed panel said in May 2023 that India’s markets watchdog ” drew a blank” on the case, while the country’s top court said in January this year that no further scrutiny was needed.
So far, four of the seven group companies have surpassed pre-Hinderburg report levels, including Adani Enterprises’ intraday recovery on Friday. The flagship firm’s shares are currently about 4% lower than pre-report levels.