PhonePe retains top position with 42% UPI market share in January

Walmart-backed PhonePe has, once again, emerged the top Unified Payment Interface (UPI) app in January, with 968.72 million transactions worth Rs 1.91 trillion, accounting for 42 per cent of the UPI market alone, the data put out by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows.

In January, on a month-on-month (MoM) basis, PhonePe saw its transactions go up by a little over 7 per cent and their value nearly 5 per cent. This is the second time in a row that PhonePe has bagged top position.

In December, PhonePe saw 902.03 million transactions, worth Rs 1.82 trillion, happening on its platform. PhonePe is followed by Google Pay with 853.53 million transactions amounting to Rs 1.77 trillion, accounting for almost 37 per cent of the UPI market in terms of volumes. Together, these apps control 79.13 per cent market share in terms of volumes and more than 85 per cent market share in terms of value.

In December, they accounted for more than 78 per cent in volumes, and 86 per cent by value. They were more than 82 per cent by volumes and more than 86 per cent by value in November.

WhatsApp, the new entrant expected to be a big disruptor, has failed to show any pickup in transaction volumes and value, so far.

Its transaction volumes dipped 30 per cent MoM to 560,000, worth Rs 36.44 crore, in January. It had processed 810,000 transactions worth Rs 29.72 crore in December. In November, it had processed 310,000, worth Rs 13.87 crore.

Behind PhonePe and Google Pay is Paytm Payments Bank App with 281.18 million transactions worth Rs 33,909.50 crore, followed by Amazon Pay with 46.30 million transaction amounting to Rs 4,044.38 crore. NPCI’s own app, Bhim, clocked 23.38 million transactions amounting to Rs 7,462.94 crore. In January, the UPI platform recorded 2.3 billion transactions worth Rs 4.3 trillion, up 3 per cent both in volumes and value terms. It breached the 2-billion (volume) mark for the fourth straight month.

When we segregate transactions into peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-merchant (P2M), we find, in January, a little over 56 per cent of the transactions on the UPI platform were P2P and the rest P2M. In value terms, more than 83 per cent accounted for P2P transactions and the rest P2M.

NPCI had recently imposed a 30 per cent cap on third-party apps on transactions processed via UPI, effective January 1, 2021. This had prompted many to criticise the regulator for stifling competition in the UPI space.

However, the existing third-party app providers, processing over 30 per cent of the transactions, will have two years from January 2021 to comply with it in a phased manner.

Both Google Pay and PhonePe will have to comply with NPCI’s diktat and bring down the share in UPI transactions to below 30 per cent in the next two years.