India’s UPI (Unified Payment Interface)—an interoperable digital payment system co-launched by local banking dynamos—transactions doubled in just a year to cross the 2 billion mark in October, a 100% rise from the same period last year.
Value of the transactions facilitated by four-year-old UPI amounted to INR 3,861 billion (USD 51 million), a rise of over 17% in value compared to the previous month, as online shoppers thronged to the e-commerce platforms during India’s yearly festive season sales.
A report by local media The Economic Times, said about 60% of payment on e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon India were digital payments.
PhonePe, the digital payment arm of e-commerce behemoth Flipkart, said Monday it processed 835 million transactions on UPI in October, its highest ever. The company claimed it has topped the chart for UPI transactions with a market share of more than 40%. PhonePe said its registered user base has crossed 250 million.
“We are on a mission to make digital payments a way of life for every Indian citizen, and our next target is to cross 500 million registered users by Dec 2022,” Sameer Nigam, CEO and founder of PhonePe, said in a statement.
According to a report by local media Entrackr, Google Pay has slid to the second spot clocking 819 million UPI transactions in October on its payment app. In the last 1.5 years this is the first time Google Pay, the leader in UPI payments, has not been the top UPI payment platform.
“Paytm and Amazon Pay remained at third and fourth spot with 245 million and 125 million transactions respectively whereas other players have collectively registered around 47 million transactions via UPI in October,” Entrackr said, quoting a source.
A former Paytm senior executive Deepak Abbot in a blogpost said, while Google Pay has been the biggest third party app for peer-to-peer UPI transactions, it hasn’t been able to actively acquire merchants.
A report by RedSeer Consulting in August said the share of digital payments in mom-and-pop stores has increased from 60% to 75% post COVID-19.