Walmart’s PhonePe continues to beat Google Pay, Paytm as top UPI app in Jan; WhatsApp volume declines

Walmart-owned digital payments company PhonePe has retained its monthly pole position in the UPI-app tally for volume as well as value in January 2021. The company processed 968.72 million UPI transactions involving nearly Rs 1.92 lakh crore. PhonePe volume was more than 100 million transactions higher than Google’s 853.53 million transactions worth Rs 1.77 lakh crore. Paytm Payments Bank, however, remained the distant third player with a volume of 332.69 million worth Rs 37,845.76 crore. The combined transaction volume of the three leading UPI apps accounted for 93.5 per cent share of the total January volume of 2,302.73 million while the value share stood at 94.5 per cent of Rs 4.31 lakh crore, according to the data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

PhonePe had led the December tally as well with 902.03 million transactions worth Rs 1.82 lakh crore processed up from 868.4 million transactions worth Rs 1.75 lakh crore processed in November. On the other hand, Google Pay had slipped to the second spot in December with 854.49 million transactions amounting to Rs 1.76 lakh crore down from 960 million transactions in November while the value had increased from Rs 1.61 lakh crore. Paytm Payments Bank processed 256.36 million transactions amounting to Rs 31,291.83 crore in December from 260.09 million transactions worth Rs 28,986.93 crore in November.

Transactions processed in January by other leading UPI apps from internet businesses including Amazon Pay and WhatsApp stood at 46.30 million (Rs 4,044.38 crore) and 0.56 million (Rs 36.44 crore) respectively. Importantly, WhatsApp’s January volume declined from 0.81 million transactions in December amid the messaging company asking users last month to share their data with Facebook such as contact number to continue using its service. However, it later informed that the update, for which it had extended the deadline from February 8 to May 15, is related to “messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional,”, it had said in a note. WhatsApp UPI transaction value grew from Rs 29.72 crore in December.

Jio Payments Bank processed only 0.41 million transactions worth Rs 27.91 crore. The overall volume of transactions in January increased 3 per cent from the preceding month while the jump in the value of transactions stood at 3.60 per cent. UPI transactions had exited 2020 with the Rs 4-lakh-crore value mark in December involving 2.23 billion transactions.