PhonePe ups market share in UPI digital payment ecosystem

Walmart-owned PhonePe has continued to be the king in India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) market. As the volume and value of India’s digital payments using UPI picked up in June, the fintech major has mopped up a higher share of the market, now inching towards the half-way mark.

With 1.29 billion transactions (amounting to Rs 2,62,566 crore) in June, PhonePe now controls 46% share in the UPI ecosystem, 1% more than its share in the previous month.

30% cap

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has in fact asked every player to bring down their share in the UPI transactions market to below 30%. Starting January 1, the limit of 30% is being calculated on the basis of total volume of transactions processed on UPI during the preceding three months by a player, on a rolling basis. Players have until December 2023 to comply with the market cap norms.

The central bank introduced a cap to ensure that an outage in services by a player does not impact the whole market.

UPI transactions surged in June

The latest data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows that UPI payments, which reported a fall in April and May, have reported a surge in June, reporting a record high both in terms of volume and value. The instant fund-transfer technology reported 2.8 billion transactions worth Rs 5.47 lakh crore in June. Of the total, peer-to-peer transactions accounted for 1.55 billion, and peer-to-merchants, the remaining 1.26 billion.

Google Pay, the second largest player with 972 million transactions worth Rs 2,07,288 crore, has mopped a market share of 34.67%, pretty similar to what it posted in the previous month.

Paytm Payments Bank stood at a distant third with 383 million transactions accounting for Rs 44,981 crore.

Among other players, Amazon Pay handled 51.34 million transactions worth Rs 4,815 crore. The government-owned BHIM app reported 22.8 million transactions worth Rs 7,320 crore.

Two bank-owned apps — Axis Bank Apps and Yes Bank Apps – reported an increase in numbers. While Axis handled 61.9 million transactions (worth Rs 857.05 crore), Yes Bank managed 24.7 million transactions in June, accounting for Rs 5,227.04 crore.

The consecutive drop in digital payments using the popular UPI facility in the first two months of 2021-22 had raised concerns. As the second wave of the pandemic trimmed the economic activities, overall digital transactions had taken a downward swing in the first two months of 2021-22.

Many suspected that the payment mechanism had probably hit an upper circuit. With the number of transactions recording a new high in June, those doubts have been put to rest.

In May, there were around 2,540 million transactions using UPI, totalling Rs 4.91 lakh crore. In April, UPI transactions stood at 2,641 million, amounting to a total of Rs 4.94 lakh crore.

In March, NPCI reported 2,732 million UPI transactions with a total of Rs 5.05 lakh crore.