India’s digital payment landscape made history in March, as PhonePe became the first company to achieve 10 billion UPI transactions per month, based on the latest numbers released by National Payments Corporation of India.
This marks a clear confirmation of PhonePe’s dominance in the UPI ecosystem. The total transaction volume on PhonePe in March stood at ₹14.48 lakh crore, getting closer to reaching ₹15 lakh crore in value.
Google Pay continued to hold the second rank, achieving 7.5 billion transactions in March. Google Pay was close to reaching ₹10 lakh crore in total value in March.
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UPI ecosystem expands at record pace
Overall, there were more than 22.6 billion transactions via the UPI platform in March, worth a total transaction value of above ₹29.6 lakh crore. The statistics indicate the rapid adoption of real-time digital payments in India, ranging from small retail payments to large transactions.
The duopoly of PhonePe and Google Pay continues unabated, holding a market share of almost 78 percent, with each holding 45 percent and 33 percent shares respectively.
Market dominance concerns and regulatory measures
Despite this, the NPCI is planning to restrict the market share of any individual UPI application provider to 30 percent in order to prevent market dominance and system risks.
Nevertheless, this limit has not been implemented thus far owing to lack of a proper implementation mechanism.
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Other players trail behind leaders
Paytm still stayed far behind at third place, with 1.7 billion transactions amounting to almost ₹1.9 lakh crore in March.
In terms of new competitors, Navi kept growing steadily, getting closer to 800 million transactions per month. BHIM also reached 200 million transactions, while super.money made around 340 million transactions, with the help of promotions during the IPL season.
The latest statistics highlight the increasing reach of the UPI network in India, despite efforts from regulators to maintain growth and competition in one of the largest real-time payment systems in the world.
