BackGoogle Pay, PhonePe account for 86% of UPI transactions by value in Oct: NPCI
Google Pay accounted for 857.81 million transactions, while PhonePe came in second with 839.88 million transactions. Together, the two apps account for about 81% of the market
PremiumNEW DELHI: Payments operators, Google Pay and PhonePe, seem to have a stranglehold on the unified payments interface (UPI) market in India. According to October data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), published for the first time, Google Pay accounted for 857.81 million transactions, while PhonePe came in second with 839.88 million transactions. Together, the two apps accounted for about 81% of the market, the data shows.
The data said ₹1,65,654.71 crore worth of transactions happened through Google Pay in October, while ₹1,68,085.06 crore worth of transactions took place through PhonePe. This made up for about 86% of total transaction value on UPI in October.
While the data compiled was for the period before WhatsApp was allowed to roll out its payments feature in India, the platform seems to have barely made an impact during that period. According to NPCI’s data, only 70,000 transactions worth ₹9.32 crore happened through WhatsApp Pay in October. The company was allowed to roll out the service to 2 million users at this time. It has now been approved for 20 million users.
Other than these, Amazon Pay and PayTM Payments Bank have also made an impact on the industry, though they’re far behind the leaders. While PayTM accounted for about 11% of the market, with 244.94 million transactions ( ₹27,489.33 crore in value), Amazon Pay saw 46.59 million transactions ( ₹3,854.49 in value).
Both PayTM and Amazon lost market share between September and October, as Google and PhonePy grew in the market. Google Pay saw 751.61 million transactions in September (worth ₹1,46,414.83 crore), while PhonePe had 688.32 million transactions (worth ₹1,37,819.43 crore). On the other hand, Amazon Pay had 81.7 million transactions (worth ₹3,613.83 crore) and PayTM had 208.33 million transactions (worth ₹23,353.91 crore).
The NPCI had recently imposed a 30% cap on third party apps on total volume transactions processed via UPI. This had prompted many to criticize the regulator for stifling competition in the UPI space. “This announcement has come as a surprise and has implications for hundreds of millions of users who use UPI for their daily payments and could impact the further adoption of UPI and the end goal of financial inclusion. Digital payments in India is still in its infancy and any interventions at this point should be made with a view to accelerate consumer choice and innovation. Choice-based and open model key to drive momentum," Google Pay had said at the time.
However, as reported by Mint earlier, experts said the cap may not affect incumbents like PhonePe and Google Pay, since the market will normalize over time as more players enter.
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