It was this July that the Unified Payments Interface showed a significant spurt in transaction volume by 3.95 percent month-on-month to 14.44 billion from 13.89 billion in June. This surge provides impetus to the growing adoption and increasing reliance on digital payment platforms across India. Where key players are concerned, PhonePe and Google Pay continued to dominate the UPI landscape with their huge market share.
PC: Moneycontrol
According to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India, PhonePe led the market with 6.98 billion transactions and a market share of 48.3%. This was followed by Google Pay with 5.34 billion transactions, capturing a 37% share of this market. The other big player, Paytm, had 1.12 billion transactions, amounting to a 7.82% market share. Despite the rise in UPI transactions, Paytm has seen its market position fall.
In value terms, PhonePe’s market share has fallen marginally from 50.27% in June to 49.85% in July. The value market share of Paytm also saw a marginal decline to 5.98%. Google Pay, however remained in the positive terrain with its value market share seeing an increase from 35% to 35.6%. This up and down movement in the market share for the big boys is said to be driven by the new entrants in the UPI ecosystem.
The competitive landscape is changing with the advent of new entrants like CRED, NAVI, Groww, Slice, and Flipkart UPI. It has been noticed that these platforms have now started cutting away significant transaction volumes earlier captured by the leading apps. Notably, CRED emerged as the fourth-largest player in the UPI space, joining other contenders like Axis Bank Apps, Amazon Pay, Navi, ICICI Bank Apps, Fampay by Trio, and Kotak Mahindra Bank Apps. Despite all that hype, WhatsApp Pay only managed 11th place, superseding BHIM, Groww, Slice, MobiKwik, and Flipkart UPI.
Of the new entrants, the most impressive growth was that of Navi, by Sachin Bansal, which almost doubled from 35 million transactions in June to 68 million in July, underlining the growing user base and popularity.
The UPI ecosystem continues to expand, reflected in crossing of 500 million transactions processed per day on three occasions during August. It is the fourth such occasion when such a milestone has been achieved since the inception of UPI in April 2016. In the not-so-distant future, an ambitious target has been set by NPCI to touch 1 billion transactions per day by FY 2026-27.
That is to say, the UPI landscape is dynamic, with PhonePe and Google Pay ruling it, new players like Navi making a big splash. With digital payments fast becoming important for daily transactions, the competition between platforms can only get fiercer and bring in more innovation across the board to improve user experience.
