By Administrator_India
Walmart-owned PhonePe and SoftBank-backed Paytm have both claimed market leadership in February 2021 in India’s intensely competitive digital payments space.
While Paytm claimed on March 1 that it has crossed 1.2 billion monthly transactions across payments methods such as Wallet, UPI, cards, and internet banking, PhonePe staked its claim for digital payments market leadership on March 2, with over 1.07 billion transactions across UPI, Cards, and Wallets.
While Paytm said this growth came on the back of strong growth in offline payments and financial services, PhonePe said it witnessed a surge in offline payments across Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, having already digitized over 17.5 million kiranas. Paytm said 17 million merchants use its Paytm for Business app.
On average, India clocks 3.3 billion digital transactions per month across various payment methods: UPI, credit cards, debit cards, wallets. Data from NPCI, which operates the UPI payment railroad, shows that there were 2.29 billion transactions in February. While the breakup for the UPI apps is not yet available for the month, PhonePe has enjoyed a dominant market share in previous months, with Google Pay claiming the second spot.
For instance, in January, PhonePe clocked 968.2 million transactions compared to Paytm, which saw 280 million UPI transactions.
In February, PhonePe processed 970 million UPI transactions and 98 million from cards and its wallet offering. If you add these two, the total transactions work out to 1,068 million transactions or 1.07 billion, which tallies with what PhonePe has officially stated. While Paytm’s UPI numbers have been growing due to a better user experience, this has mostly come at the expense of Google Pay and not PhonePe.