PhonePe crosses 1.6 Bn UPI transactions in Aug; Google Pay recovers

Digital payments platform PhonePe continues to lead the UPI ecosystem over peers including Google Pay and Paytm in terms of transaction volume and value in August.

PhonePe recorded 1,622.95 million or 1.6 billion transactions worth Rs 3,01,644.80 crore in August, data released by the National Payments Corporation of India shows. During the period, Google Pay registered 1234.75 million or 1.2 billion worth Rs 2,44,453.05 crore.

UPI had registered 3.55 billion transactions worth Rs 6,39,116 crore in which peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions were recorded at 1,945.80 million and 1609.74 million respectively.

In terms of volume wise market share, PhonePe registered 45.64% share in UPI in August whereas Google Pay recorded 34.72%. In the previous month, PhonePe and Google Pay had 45.94% and 34.45% market share in the UPI ecosystem respectively.

While their market share remained constant as compared to the previous month, the duo had broken all previous records in terms of processing number and amount of transactions via UPI. With a significant surge in transaction numbers, Google Pay did not let PhonePe to widen the gap in August.

Paytm, which already distanced itself from UPI-focused payments, has recorded 423.63 million transactions worth Rs 50,021.40 crore, controlling 11.91% share in the UPI ecosystem.

New entrants in UPI such as WhatsApp continue to show underwhelming numbers as the Facebook-owned messenger registered 0.5 million transactions amounting to Rs 44.70 crore. WhatsApp was expected to go up in the last couple of months as it was allowed to onboard more users.

It’s worth noting that PhonePe was also the most downloaded fintech app in India in August. According to Sensor Tower data, PhonePe had amassed 9.5 million downloads across Play Store and App Store during the month, followed by Google Pay’s 7 million and Paytm’s 6.1 million.