PhonePe becomes most downloaded fintech app in India in Nov; G-Pay leads global chart

Digital payments platform PhonePe has become the most downloaded fintech app in India in November, data sourced from Sensor Tower shows. The Sameer Nigam-led firm has dethroned Google Pay to grab the top spot.

PhonePe was downloaded over 9 million times in November across Android and iOS platforms in India, a 10% surge in downloads over the previous month. Google Pay was installed more than 8.18 million times, registering a drop of 21% in downloads as compared to October. 

This is the second time in 2020 that PhonePe has been able to score a lead over Google Pay in terms of downloads in India. In July, PhonePe had recorded 5.6 million downloads and Google Pay had 5.36 million downloads.

While PhonePe has been able to outrun Google Pay in India, the search giant-owned UPI-based payments app has maintained its supremacy in the global rankings, registering 10.7 million downloads to become the most downloaded fintech app.

Besides India, Google Pay has a decent presence in Australia, Canada, Japan, Russia, Singapore, Ukraine, the UK and the US. However, it received over 76% downloads from India in November.

In the top five list of most downloaded fintech apps in India in November, Paytm, Indiabulls Dhani and YONO SBI have grabbed the third, fourth and fifth spots respectively. During the period, Paytm was downloaded more than 3.7 million times followed by Dhani’s 3.5 million and YONO SBI’s 2.9 million downloads.

Importantly, PhonePe has the largest market share among all the UPI-based apps. As of October, it controls more than 40% market share in the UPI ecosystem with 835 million transactions. During the same period, Google Pay recorded 819 million transactions and slipped to the second position.

Last week, Flipkart had announced a partial spin-off of PhonePe in a move that will help the latter to constitute a new board of directors and access outside capital to fund its long-term ambitions over the next three to four years.

As a part of the hive off, PhonePe also announced to raise $700 million in primary capital at a post-money valuation of $5.5 billion from existing Flipkart investors led by Walmart.