Walmart Owned PhonePe Surpasses Google Pay in India as UPI Tops 2 Bn Monthly Transactions
02, November 2020
UPI- Unified Payments Interface, an almost four- year old infrastructure built by the largest banks of India, achieved a milestone of over 2 billion transactions last month, exactly a year after the benchmark of one-billion monthly transactions.
Due to its scalable architecture that allows hassle- free transaction amongst all payment modes, UPI has become the most popular digital payments method in the country. Various payment apps including prominent players in the segment such GooglePay, Amazon, Paytm and PhonePe have said to be driving the most transactions for UPI.
October 2020 recorded 2.07 billion UPI transactions which processed around $51.9 billion in value, up from $25.7 billion in October last year.
In an interview, Dilip Asbe, the chief executive of NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) said that ““Unlike China, we have given equal opportunities to both small and large domestic and foreign companies”. Asbe has previously stated that NPCI is in talks to expand UPI outside the national borders
Leading the market in the UPI transactions, PhonePe recorded 835 million transactions in October, while GooglePay hit about 820 million. Paytm and Amazon, on the other hand recorded about 245 and 125 million UPI transactions.
Walmart’s PhonePe is said to witness a surge in number of transactions as more number of offline shops, merchants and consumers have opted the payment system for their transactions. On the other hand, it is said to be the first time for over a year when GooglePay did not top the charts for driving the most volume of the UPI transactions.
Since the market has shown expansion opportunities, things are becoming tougher as some market leaders have witnessed difference among themselves while competing in the segment in the recent past. Moreover, with more prominent market players such as WhatsApp planning to join the segment, the competition is expected to become more rigorous in future.
