Paytm UPI Transactions Fall: Are Google Pay, PhonePe Eating Into Paytm’s Stronghold?

This month the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced the performance of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) which recorded 822.29 Mn transactions worth INR 1,46,386.54 Cr. The M-o-M growth was 8.97% for overall UPI transactions. But looks like not everyone benefitted from this growth.

While PhonePe has claimed to record 335 Mn of the overall UPI transactions in July, reports have surfaced that Paytm has recorded less than 140 Mn transactions on UPI for the month. It is notable that in May, Paytm had claimed to record over 200 Mn UPI transactions itself. This shows the M-o-M fall the company has seen in terms of UPI adoption.

At the same time, it is speculated that Google Pay recorded over 300 Mn transactions.

Paytm, however, claims that it has achieved over 600 Mn transactions in July, which includes payments through Paytm Wallet, Paytm UPI, cards and net banking.  Deepak Abbot, senior vice president at Paytm said that they are witnessing that Paytm wallet is more preferred for offline payments than UPI.

Abbot said Paytm has around 70% market share in overall digital payments across online and offline merchants.

PhonePe had earlier said that growth has come on the back of the exponential expansion of PhonePe’s merchant network, both online and offline. It also invested aggressively on its marketing activities this year. Sameer Nigam, CEO and founder PhonePe said that in July, the PhonePe app was used by 60 Mn users.

Sajith Sivanandan, managing director, Google Pay and Next Billion Users Initiative, Google India said that the rapid growth of UPI is testimony to the vast numbers of new users coming into the fold of digital payments, driven by its ease and simplicity. “We’ve observed that there is a clear shift in users’ preference among different forms of payment and UPI now comprises a large chunk of all online payments,” he added.

Google Pay is is expanding its merchant network across offline and online, offering consumers rental payments, electricity bills and payments at grocery stores through the app.

According to NITI Aayog’s “Digital Payments (2018 edition)”, India’s digital payments industry is estimated to grow to $1 Tn by 2023. For FY20, the Ministry Of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has set up a target of 40 Bn digital transactions.

It is interesting to see the waging war to dominate digital payments in the country among these incumbent players, as the WhatsApp Payments with already set up 400 Mn user base gets closer to its launch. Who will fare how with WhatsApp Payments would be an interesting watch!