PhonePe cements position as leading payments app,
WhatsApp falls behind
PhonePe processed the most transactions in the last three months to continue as
India’s top Unified Payments Interface (UPI) app and WhatsApp, the messaging platform
used by millions in India, failed to live up to expectations that it will grow rapidly, data
showed.
In February, WhatsApp processed 0.55 million transactions amounting to Rs 32.41
crore. Transactions have gone down since December when it processed 0.81 million
transactions amounting to Rs 29.72 crore. Since its limited launch in November last
year, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, has processed 2.23 million transactions
of 9.04 billion transactions on the UPI platform. Reports had suggested that it is a
conscious effort on the part of WhatsApp to go slow because they want to enhance
customer experience before going for scale.
PhonePe, which is backed by Walmart, processed 975.53 million transactions
amounting to Rs 1.89 trillion in February. In January, it had processed 968.72 million
transactions worth Rs 1.91 trillion. Google Pay, on the other hand, has seen a fall in
transaction volume since November last year. From processing 960 million transactions
in November, Google Pay’s transaction volume has come down to 827.86 million in
February worth Rs 1.74 trillion.
Together, these two players controlled a little over 78 per cent of the UPI market in terms
of volume of transactions and 85 per cent in terms of the value of transactions in
February.
UPI, the flagship payments platform of the National Payments Corporation of India
(NPCI), recorded 2.29 billion transactions worth Rs 4.25 trillion in February. Sequentially,
the transactions dipped 0.42 per cent by volume and 1.39 per cent by value over
January because of the fewer number of days in February. However, year-on-year, the
transactions were up 73 per cent by volume and more than 90 per cent by value.
Paytm Payments Bank recorded good growth month-on-month. In February, Pay