PhonePe, the digital payment company owned by Walmart, has yet again grabbed the highest share of transactions powered by Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the government-backed digital payment mechanism, cementing its position as the top app for such payments.
In May, the Bengaluru-based payments firm accounted for 45.3% of all UPI transactions in terms of value, and 47.4%, in terms of volume, according to the latest government data. In absolute terms, PhonePe processed 1.14 billion transactions worth USD 32 billion last month.
In comparison, rival Google Pay and Paytm contributed 34.6% and 13.5%, respectively, to the total number of UPI transactions. In terms of transaction value, Google Pay seized 38.14% share, while Paytm could manage only 7.28%.
This comes at a time when overall UPI transactions came down by 101 million to 2.53 billion in May from 2.6 billion in April. The decline is primarily due to the fact that the second wave of COVID-19 that began in late March and peaked in May, adversely impacted consumer spending as people tightened their purse strings amid the pandemic. Even PhonePe, which is holding onto the largest market share of UPI payments in the country, saw UPI transaction volume dip by 40 million in May over the previous month.
However, in the first week of June, PhonePe said it witnessed an annualized total payment volume of USD 390 billion across all payment modes in May 2021. The five-year-old company also said its registered user base crossed the 300 million mark, while it witnessed 125 million monthly active users last month. Moreover, PhonePe grew its merchant network to 20 million offline stores across 11,000 small towns in India.
“The PhonePe app is processing transactions from over 19,000 pin-codes spanning more than 99% of the country. More than 80% of these transactions are being done by users in tier-2, 3, 4 cities, and beyond, which is a testament to the fact that digital payments adoption in Indian is truly inclusive,” Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO of PhonePe, said in a recent statement. He added that PhonePe aims get 500 million Indians to adopt digital payments by 2023.