PhonePe registers 250 mn users, turns market leader with 835 mn UPI transactions

Bengaluru headquartered PhonePe on Monday said that it has surpassed the 250 million user mark on the digital payments platform, with an aim to cross 500 million by December 2022. 

In October, the Flipkart-owned firm clocked over 100 million monthly active users, 2.3 billion app sessions and a record 925 million transactions with an annual TPV run rate of $277 billion, a statement said. TPV is the total payment volume or transaction value recorded on a platform for a given period.

Of the 925 million transactions, as many as 835 million were UPI-based payments. This implies that the platform accounted for nearly 40% of all transactions (2.07 billion) made through the four-year-old payments infrastructure in October, assuming the market-leading position in the category.

In addition to PhonePe, the open architecture of UPI is dominantly used by Amazon Pay, Google Pay and Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm.

Google Pay led the category for months, but lagged behind PhonePe this time with 820 million transactions, TechCrunch reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Paytm and Amazon Pay, on the other hand, saw 245 million and 125 million transactions, respectively, the report added.

While Amazon and Google did not issue responses to TechCircle’s queries, a Paytm spokesperson said, “Overall, the transactions through these funding sources (Paytm UPI, Paytm Wallet, Paytm Payments Bank account) have grown over 20% in the month of October. Person-to-merchant (P2M) constitute over 70% of the total transactions."

Read: PhonePe offers car and bike insurance 

The surge in the number of UPI and overall digital transactions is a direct result of the growing adoption of online payment modes due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the increasing penetration of smartphones. Additionally, financial services and cashback schemes also prompte users to transact online. It is accepted by 13 million merchant outlets across 500 cities nationwide.