UPI transactions dip in April, PhonePe’s dominance continues

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The overall slowdown in spending induced by the second wave of the pandemic and a general sluggishness at the start of a new financial year have impacted the volumes of digital payments through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in April.

On a month-on-month basis, UPI transactions have reported a decline in April, 2021, as per  the data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Overall, UPI reported a volume of 2,641 million, amounting to a total of Rs 4.94 lakh crore transacted using the instant fund-transfer technology, slightly below the March numbers — 2,732 million transactions with a total of Rs 5.05 lakh crore.

UPI transactions had been growing continuously over the last one year, barring February 2021.

Performance

Barring the leading player, Walmart-owned PhonePe, most other leading companies in the UPI ecosystem have shown a decline in their volume as well as total value of transactions. PhonePe reported 1,199 million transactions with a total value of Rs 2.31 lakh crore. It has increased its market share to 45% in April, from 43.9% reported in the previous month.

“During the lockdown last year, many people had moved to digital payments, because of the movement restrictions imposed by the government. This time, the fall in UPI transactions in April could be because of a mix of factors — a slowdown in spending as well as a base effect as it follows a peak month of March,” says Harsh Roongta, a Sebi-registered investment advisor. He however says a proper analysis is possible only when you have data for all transactions including other digital transactions is available.

“In the second wave, the situation is pretty dicey. Everyone has hunkered down,” he added.

Three other leading UPI players — Google Pay, Paytm Payments Bank and Amazon Pay — have all reported a drop in their volume and value. Google Pay, which is at number two position, has reported 906 million transactions worth Rs 1.9 lakh crore value in April, down from 957 million transactions worth Rs 2.01 lakh crore in March.

Paytm, at distant third, has managed 373 million transactions (amounting to Rs 41,470 crore) in April, down from 401 million transactions (Rs 43,221 crore).

Amazon Pay handled 49 million transactions (Rs 4,272 crore), marginally below its March tally of 52 million, worth Rs 4,457 crore.

PhonePe dominates

The April tally is however higher than that of February and January. In February, there was a minor slip because of lower number of working days, and had reported 2,292 million transactions, accounting for Rs 4.25 lakh crore. In January 2021, UPI transactions stood at 2,302 million worth Rs 4.31 lakh crore.

While PhonePe took away 45% of the total pie, Google Pay’s market share during April recorded a marginal decline to 34.3%. Paytm’s market share stood at 12%.

In April, WhatsApp Payments reported 0.54 million transactions accounting for Rs 48 crore. The Facebook-owned instant messaging app, which was allowed by NPCI to roll out UPI payments in November 2020, has failed to ramp up volumes in the last six months. NPCI had allowed the messaging app to expand its UPI user base in a graded manner starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million. A slew of court cases including one on data localisation compliance had slowed down its foray into UPI ecosystem for more than a year.

NCPI has asked every player to cap their market share to 30%, and given time till end of 2022 to comply with the same. As per the circular dated March 25, 2021, each payment service provider and third-party application provider (TPAP) should ensure that the total volume of the transactions should not exceed 30% of the overall volume of transactions processed in UPI, during the preceding three months, starting from January 1, 2021. Existing TPAPs, which are exceeding the volume cap as on December 31, 2020, were however given a period of two years to comply with the new rules.