PhonePe Closes US Engineering Office as UAE Licence Keeps Overseas Push Alive

PhonePe has closed its Bay Area engineering office after deciding the small US operation was not producing enough results to keep running, Inc42 reported, citing Times of India and a person familiar with the development.

The decision winds down a four-year-old unit that sat outside PhonePe’s main engineering base in Bengaluru.

The US team had seven to eight engineers and worked with the company’s mobile platform and engineering groups in India, making the closure a consolidation of technical work rather than a retreat from every international plan.

The office was announced in June 2022, when PhonePe expected the overseas unit to start with around 10 engineers.

Its initial mandate was to build technology that could support the company’s next 300 million users, giving the Bay Area team a platform role tied to future scale rather than a standalone market operation.

Leadership around the unit had already changed.

Gaurav Lochan, a former Meta engineering executive, joined PhonePe in April 2022 as head of engineering and led the US office when it was announced.

His LinkedIn profile shows he left the fintech company in July 2026 and is now an adviser at cybersecurity startup Aucert.

The cost and output rationale gives the shutdown its immediate business frame.

A small overseas engineering cell can be useful when it adds specialist capability or recruitment reach, but PhonePe concluded the US operation did not justify its continuation.

Consolidating the work also offered a way to reduce costs.

PhonePe’s next overseas step is tied to the UAE rather than the closed US engineering office.

CEO Sameer Nigam recently pointed to a UAE central bank licence, the company’s first authorisation outside India.

The approval could let PhonePe sign up merchants in the country, place payment terminals in stores and provide currency-exchange services.

If the plan materialises, the UAE would become the Walmart-backed fintech company’s first foreign market.

The company is still adding payments products in India.

At Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, a Visa partnership added another domestic track: three card-free payment products for shoppers and businesses.

That local product push sits alongside the UAE licensing step and the decision to pull engineering work back from the US.

The operating picture is more mixed on capital markets and financial results.

PhonePe filed an updated draft red herring prospectus with India’s Securities and Exchange Board in January for a public issue made up solely of an offer for sale of up to 5.06 crore equity shares.

The March pause followed geopolitical tension in West Asia and unstable global equity markets.

PhonePe’s operating revenue rose 11.5% to ₹7,920.5 crore in FY26 from ₹7,105 crore a year earlier, while net loss widened 62% to ₹2,792 crore from ₹1,727.4 crore in FY25.

The US closure leaves one material unknown: the company has not yet publicly detailed how much engineering work will move back to Indian hubs or whether any specialist functions from the Bay Area team will be replaced.