PhonePe leaves Google Pay behind in UPI market share in Dec

Digital payments firm PhonePe overtook its arch-rival Google Pay in terms of transaction volume and value in December, data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows.

PhonePe had recorded 902.03 million transactions worth Rs 182,126.88 crore in December whereas Google Pay registered 854.49 million transactions amounting to Rs 176,199.33 crore during the same period.

Overall, UPI had recorded 2.23 billion transactions worth Rs 4,16,176.21 crore or Rs 4.16 trillion in December in which the peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions stood at 1,283.71 million valuing to Rs 3,48,006.06 crore whereas peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions recorded at 950.45 million amounting to Rs 68,170.15 crore.

In November, Google Pay had the largest market share with 960.02 million transactions through UPI followed by PhonePe’s 868.40 million. However, PhonePe was ahead of Google Pay in terms of the value of the transaction and had processed Rs 1,75,453.85 crore as compared to Google Pay’s Rs 1,61,418.19 crore.

While the top two players in the UPI ecosystem swapped their position, Paytm Payments Bank apps and Amazon Pay maintained their third and fourth spot in the last month. Paytm Payments Banks apps recorded 256.36 million transactions worth Rs 31,291.83 crore and Amazon Pay’s total UPI transaction was recorded at 40.53 million worth Rs 3,508.93 crore.

WhatsApp, which has been facing users' wrath over its new privacy policy, had recorded 0.81 million transactions worth Rs 29.72 crore in December against 0.31 million transactions worth Rs 13.87 crore in the previous month.

The Facebook-owned instant messaging app was allowed to roll out its UPI-based payment feature for more users in early November. However, it has not been able to gain the anticipated upsurge in processing UPI volume and value in the last two months.