August UPI transactions: PhonePe leads, Google Pay gains

As United Payments Interface (UPI) transactions continued on an upward growth trajectory in August, digital payments player PhonePe set a new record, crossing the Rs 3 lakh crore mark in transaction values for the first time.

With 1.62 billion transactions, PhonePe amounts to 45 percent of UPI volumes and 47 percent in value terms with transactions amounting to Rs. 3.01 lakh crore.

The second-largest player Google Pay’s transactions grew from 1.11 billion in July to 1.24 billion in August. At transactions amounting to Rs 2.44 lakh crore, Google Pay’s value market share jumped from 34.45 percent in July to 38 percent in August. The app’s value market share stood at

While Paytm’s larger focus is its wallet business and other offerings, it is the third-largest player for UPI. In August, Paytm Payments Bank’s value market share dropped to 8.81 percent from 14 percent last month.

However, Paytm Payment Bank’s share in total transaction volumes in August stood at 14 percent. It clocked in 0.49 billion transactions valued at Rs 56,319 crore.

In August, total UPI transactions again set new records with overall UPI transactions at 3555.55 million, thus crossing the 3.5 billion mark for the first time. The total value of transactions in August stood at Rs. 6.39 lakh crore.

Earlier this month, when leader PhonePe said it will now share insights from transactions on its platform in a quarterly report, Founder and CEO Sameer Nigam told Moneycontrol that while their transactions are skewed towards UPI, they are reflective of the direction of the market overall.

“It is fair to say that we are not a perfect representation of how the market overall would look in terms of instrument split. But at an aggregate level, the sheer volume of data is representative of consumer behaviour,” he said.

As per guidelines by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on volume cap for Third Party Application Provider (TPAP), payment apps like PhonePe, Google Pay will have to adhere to a cap of 30 percent in volume market share, effective January 1, 2021. Existing TPAPs who exceed the volume cap as of 31st December 2020, will have a period of 2 years from the effective date to comply with the provisions.

On meeting the market share cap, Nigam said that it is NPCI that has to do something about it and not the company as he is functioning in a competitive and open market.

“If PhonePe is the app of choice in a perfectly competitive market space, I can’t do anything about the market share cap. What do you want me to do? Tell the next person that installs PhonePe: ‘Don’t use me’?” he said.