Unified Payments Interface (UPI) Sees 13.6% Growth in March Transactions

The Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, experienced a significant 13.6% rise in transaction volume during March, reaching an impressive total of 18.30 billion transactions. The leading UPI applications—PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, Navi, and Super.money—held onto their rankings, while CRED slipped to seventh place, overtaken by Axis Bank. This shift mirrors a trend observed in February, when Super.money displaced CRED in the top five.

Axis Bank advanced past CRED by achieving 125 million B2C transactions in March. Within the UPI framework, B2C (business-to-customer) transactions encompass various payments such as refunds, salaries, or cashback provided by businesses to their customers.

Holding a substantial 47.25% market share by transaction volume, PhonePe continued to dominate by processing 8.64 billion transactions. Google Pay, closely trailing, secured a 36.04% market share with 6.59 billion transactions. Collectively, these two powerful platforms commanded over 83% of the UPI transaction volume.

As the third largest competitor, Paytm accounted for a 6.67% share, processing 1.22 billion transactions.

In terms of transaction value, PhonePe led once more with a commanding 50.76% market share, handling over Rs 12.57 lakh crore, while Google Pay followed at 34.99% with Rs 8.66 lakh crore.

Despite holding just a modest volume share of 0.79%, CRED established itself as a high-value player, contributing Rs 55,091.22 crore, equating to 2.22% of the overall value. This illustrates the company’s effective appeal to high-value clientele.

Other applications, including Amazon Pay, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank, made a smaller impact in terms of volume and value but still addressed particular user demographics.

In a recent initiative, the Indian government has approved a new plan with a budget of Rs 1,500 crore aimed at promoting digital payment adoption among small merchants via the BHIM-UPI platform.