Google Pay and PhonePe top global fintech download chart in February

Google Pay was the most downloaded fintech app worldwide for February 2020, followed by home-grown player PhonePe with 15.6 million and 6 million installs respectively.

For Google Pay, this was a 2X growth in downloads compared to February last year and it got 83.6% of the total downloads from India while 5.7% came from Russia. PhonePe’s download numbers saw a 39.5% growth as compared to February last year and 99.3% of its installs came from India.

The report by Sensor Tower includes downloads for App Store and Google Play worldwide between February 1, 2019, and February 29, 2020

In India, the significant growth for both apps have also impacted their digital payments product which is based on the Unified Payments Interface or UPI. If we go by numbers, UPI processed 1.32 billion transactions in February and marked the highest growth ever in a month since its inception.

Google Pay and PhonePe lead the UPI pack followed by Paytm and other distant competitors.

Apart from Google Pay and PhonePe, PayPal, Cash App, and Alipay were the other three players which made the top five list of most downloaded fintech apps worldwide for the month.

Notably, Paytm-promoted PayPay (a joint venture with SoftBank Corporation and Yahoo Japan Corporation) and Google Pay for Business have also managed to enter the top 10 list.

Even though it appears that the coronavirus pandemic led scare hasn’t hit the February numbers much, people began social distancing and making payments online during the lockdown in their regions. While we can’t assume the effect on the mode of payments opted by consumers in February, it does appear that March and April numbers definitely would be impacted due to lockdown. 

Experts also predict that the ongoing lockdown may become a tailwind for startups in the digital payments space. During the period, all e-commerce, foodtech, e-pharmacy, grocery and other services operating, are demanding online payments to contain the spread of covid-19.