PhonePe, Google Pay & Paytm Processed 96.8% Of UPI Transactions In May

Fintech major PhonePe processed nearly half of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions in the month of May, topping the charts yet again. 

PhonePe processed 449.9 Cr, or 47% of the total UPI transactions, in May. The value of transactions processed by it stood at INR 7.57 Lakh Cr during the month. In terms of transaction value, the Walmart-backed fintech player contributed 50.85% to the total UPI transaction volume in May 2023.

Following its lead was Google Pay, which notched up 34.78% of the total UPI transactions while accounting for 33.42% of the total UPI value in May. In absolute numbers, Google Pay processed 327.46 Cr transactions worth INR 4.97 Lakh Cr during the month, down 0.16% and 0.26% month-on-month (MoM), respectively.

Paytm emerged as the third biggest player in the digital payments space, processing 134.22 Cr transactions worth INR 1.64 Lakh Cr during the month. The Noida-based fintech juggernaut accounted for a market share of 14.26% and 11.06% in terms of transaction count and value, respectively.

Together, the top three players accounted for a market share of 96.83% in terms of transaction count and 95.35% in terms of transaction value in May 2023.

Meanwhile, CRED logged a mere 6.1 Cr transactions worth more than INR 23K Cr in May. In comparison, ecommerce giant Amazon’s payment offering, Amazon Pay, raked up 5.7 Cr transactions with an aggregate value of just INR 5,772.68 Cr.

WhatsApp Pay continued to post flat numbers as it processed 1.59 Cr transactions amounting to INR 1,477.06 Cr during the month. 

Meanwhile, Zomato kicked off its UPI journey with 10,000 transactions worth INR 43 Lakh in May. It is pertinent to note that Zomato announced its UPI pilot offering in May and is yet to scale the product fully. 

In May, state-backed BHIM processed 229.6 Lakh transactions amounting to INR 7,209.87 Cr.

As per data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI processed 941.5 Cr transactions worth INR 14.89 Lakh Cr during the month of May. UPI witnessed 889.81 Cr transactions worth INR 14.07 Lakh Cr in April. 

The NPCI data for the month of May revealed that while peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions contributed 42.97% to the total UPI count and 76.89% to the total transaction value, peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions contributed 57.03% and 23.11% to the total count and value, respectively.

The NPCI data has been released a day after NPCI International Payments Limited’s CEO Ritesh Shukla said that UPI was processing 40% of the global real-time payments. 

A few weeks ago, it was also reported that Japan was weighing plans to join the UPI payment system. In the past few weeks, both Paytm and Razorpay have launched their individual offerings for online merchants that enable customers to directly make UPI payments from within the app of online players without redirecting them to the Paytm app. 

Alongside, the Payments Council of India (PCI) also wrote to the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, seeking restoration of the merchant discount rate (MDR) on RuPay debit cards as heavy infrastructure costs continue to burn a hole in the pockets of fintech players.