PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm retain UPI market share, even as WhatsApp transactions double

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The top three in the digital payments space using the UPI platform maintained their market share ahead of the festive season despite WhatsApp doubling its transactions.

PhonePe stayed the market leader in the United Payments Interface (UPI) segment, followed by PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm Payments Bank.

PhonePe logged in 165 crore transactions in September, amounting to Rs 3.06 lakh crore. The digital payments-to-financial services company commanded a 45 percent share of the volume pie and 47 percent of the value of UPI transactions, according to data by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

GooglePay retained 35 percent market share in volume terms and 38 percent in values. The payments gateway recorded 129 crore transactions amounting to Rs 2.50 lakh crore.

While it is focused more its wallet business and other offerings, Paytm Payments Bank stayed the third largest in the UPI space, though its value market share dipped to 9 percent in September from 14 percent in July. In terms of volume, Paytm controlled over 14 percent of the market through 53.8 crore transactions worth Rs 60,094 crore.

WhatsApp’s UPI arm - a newer entrant in the segment - saw its transactions double over the last one month after the company said it was scaling up the service in a phased manner.

Although WhatsApp’s share in the volume of UPI payments stayed a meagre 0.27 percent in September, the share has risen from 0.01 percent in August. This is also because WhatsApp’s UPI feature is restricted to only 20 million users as per NPCI’s directions.

The Facebook-owned messaging app saw volumes double from 5 lakh to 10 lakh from August to September. The value of transactions on WhatsApp increased from Rs 44.70 crore to Rs 62.31 crore.

Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2021 on September 30, Manesh Mahatme - Director Payments, WhatsApp India said, “Our focus right now is to drive awareness of our payments feature on WhatsApp and to build new use cases to transact.”

The app said it would place the rupee icon directly in the chat composer between the attachment and the camera icon to ensure that the payment option is more visible to users.

September saw a total of 356 billion UPI transactions with a cumulative value of Rs 6.54 lakh crore.