Google Pay Beats PhonePe To Become India’s #1 UPI Payment App: 85 Cr Transactions Worth Rs 1.65 Lakh Cr!

• Google pay and Phonepe ruling the market accounting for 81% of the total online money transfer.
• Paytm and Amazon pay remain far behind

The Covid 19  pandemic has bloomed online transactions and mobile banking. Among all the payment operators, Google pay and PhonePe have taken full advantage of the situation. Both the companies together have left no room for any other platform to enter the unified payments interface (UPI) market in India.

Recently, for the first time the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), published data for the month of October. This data shows that Google Pay and Phonepe together contributed 81% to the total online money transfer. 

Which Platform Is Doing Better? Google Pay Or Phonepe?

With 857.81 million transactions Google Pay has marginally performed better than Phonepe through which 839.88 million transactions were done in the month of October.

On the other hand, if we consider the amount of money that was transacted, Phonepe runs ahead. According to the NPIC data, transactions worth Rs 1,68,085.06 crore were done through the Walmart acquired Phonepay. While Rs 1,65,654.71 crore worth of transactions were carried out through Google Pay.

Together both the companies make up 86% of the total amount transacted through UPI platforms in October.

What Are The Other Competitors?

Amazon Pay and PayTM were the other companies that contributed to the transactions but they failed to make a remark. Paytm stands in third place with 244.94 million transactions valued at Rs 27,489.33 crores. Still, it could obtain only 11% of the market. Amazon Pay laid back with 46.59 million transactions worth Rs 3,854.49.

Because of the dominance of Google Pay and Phonepe in the market, both Paytm and Amazon lost market share in September.

This data was recorded before Whatsapp introduced payment features in India. But NPCI’s data shows that the WhatsApp payment feature was used just 70,000 times for the traction of a total of Rs 9.32 crore in October. Hence the emergence of WhatsApp in the payment industry has hardly affected the growth of the leaders.

Are UPI Transactions Going To Be Charged?

The 30% cap on the total volume of transactions carried out by third-party applications, forced by NPCI, is getting strongly criticized.

Reacting to this Google pay had said, “This announcement has come as a surprise and has implications for hundreds of millions of users who use UPI for their daily payments and could impact the further adoption of UPI and the end goal of financial inclusion. Digital payments in India is still in its infancy and any interventions at this point should be made with a view to accelerating consumer choice and innovation. Choice-based and open model key to drive momentum,”

We feel that irrespective of whether the UPI transactions will be charged or not, people won’t stop making online transactions because, more than convenience, it has become necessary.