PhonePe has rebranded its homegrown app marketplace, Indus Appstore, as PhonePe Appstore, and is repositioning it from a pure app-discovery platform into a wider marketplace for digital goods that runs on the company’s payments infrastructure.
Alongside apps and games, users of the renamed store can now buy digital gift cards and vouchers from brands across shopping, online travel, gaming, health and fitness, food and lifestyle. PhonePe said purchases will be powered by its payments stack, making it simpler to discover and pay for digital products in one place.
Payments at the centre of the marketplace
The move signals PhonePe’s intent to turn its scale in digital payments into new commerce revenue lines. The store is already present on more than 200 million devices, largely through pre-install partnerships with smartphone makers such as Motorola and Alcatel, and its top five states by adoption are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Karnataka and Telangana.
“Rebranding Indus Appstore to PhonePe Appstore is a major milestone in our journey and brings in the trust and reach of the PhonePe brand. Developers can look beyond simple app discovery and unlock new ways to earn, including ads, gift cards, and top-ups,” said Priya Narasimhan, Chief Business Officer, PhonePe Appstore.
Webstore and digital top-ups next
To reach users beyond the mobile app, PhonePe is also launching phonepeappstore.com, a webstore that lets consumers discover and buy digital goods from desktop and mobile browsers without downloading a separate app.
The company’s pipeline includes Digital Top-ups for the instant purchase of in-game currencies, dating app boosts and tech top-ups, with gaming top-ups slated to roll out first. For developers, the platform is being pitched as an alternative distribution and monetisation channel through ads, gift cards and in-app top-ups.
Second rebrand in weeks
This is the second PhonePe product to be rebranded in recent weeks, following the repositioning of its stockbroking platform Share.Market as PhonePe Invest. PhonePe launched Indus Appstore in February 2024 as a made-in-India alternative to Google Play Store; it supports 12 Indian languages and English and followed the company’s acquisition of Indus OS in July 2022.
For India’s fintech ecosystem, the rebrand underlines a broader trend: large payment platforms are using their transaction rails and user trust to expand into adjacent digital commerce, from gift cards and vouchers to micro top-ups, where seamless checkout can be a key differentiator.
