UPI Payments: PhonePe Retains Top Spot In January 2023, Processes Over 47% Transactions

PhonePe continued its run as the biggest player in the Indian digital payments space in the first month of 2023 as it processed the biggest chunk of UPI transactions. 

As per the data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), PhonePe processed 3,802.67 Cr UPI transactions in January 2023, accounting for over 47% of the total transaction count.

In terms of value, PhonePe again took the top spot by capturing UPI transactions worth INR 6.51 Lakh Cr, or 50% of the total value logged during January 2023.

Google Pay was at the second spot on the list by processing 2,782 Cr transactions worth INR 4.43 Lakh Cr during the month.

The payments corporation released the data related to Google Pay nearly a week after the data for the month was first published. For nearly a week, the Google Pay data was missing from the website.

Paytm took the third spot on the list, accounting for 14% (1,190.89 Cr) of the total transaction volume. It processed INR 1.39 Lakh Cr worth of UPI transactions in the month under review, accounting for more than 10% of the total transaction value. 

Meanwhile, CRED processed 35.18 Cr transactions worth INR 19,106.82 Cr in January 2023. While the fintech player processed just 0.4% of the total transaction count, it accounted for nearly 1.5% of the total transaction volume. 

State-backed BHIM processed 24.96 Cr transactions worth INR 8,164.65 Cr during the period under review. The rest of the fintech players and banks accounted for the remaining market.

In January 2023, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processed a record 803 Cr transactions worth INR 12.98 Lakh Cr.

The service appeared to be heavily used by users to pay merchants, although user-to-user transfer too appeared to be popular. While peer-to-merchants (P2M) transactions accounted for 54.88% of the total transactions count, P2P formed 45.12% of the total transaction volume.

While 54% of the P2M transactions were below INR 500, another 23% of transactions had a denomination of more than INR 2,000. 

On the other hand, P2P users contributed 76.83% of the total transaction value in January 2023, while P2M users accounted for 23.17% of the total. P2P transactions above INR 2,000 accounted for nearly 87% of the total P2P transactions volume, while sub-INR 500 P2P transactions accounted for just above 3% of the total transaction volume.

During January 2023, the UPI ecosystem had an uptime of 99.9978%.

Merchants in segments such as groceries and supermarkets, restaurants, bill payments and digital gaming saw high transaction volumes, while utilities and debt collection agencies emerged as ‘Medium Transacting Categories’.

Earlier this month, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das, in the central bank’s monetary policy statement of FY23, proposed the expansion of the UPI service to G20 residents travelling to India.

Besides, local players have also been scaling up products to reach new customers and percolate deeper across India. Earlier last week, PhonePe launched cross-border UPI payments for merchant outlets in the UAE, Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan. 

Besides, fintech giants Paytm and PhonePe are also reportedly in the advanced stages of integrating UPI Lite offerings into their respective digital payment apps.