UPI volume in June climbs back to pre-second wave level

Signaling return of normalcy in last-mile spending in the country in the month of June, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Tuesday reported a 11% pick up in P2P and P2M transactions across UPI apps at about 2.81 billion.

The reported volume of transactions had dipped for second consecutive time in May, at about 2.54 billion, likely as a result of complete and partial curfews placed across the country to curb the second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Top player in June was PhonePe, the Walmart-owned mobile payments player that has remained unchallenged in the space for a considerable while. It reported 1.29 billion transactions totaling to Rs 2.626 trillion.

PhonePe total value formed about 48% of overall P2P and P2M transactions value of about Rs 5.474 trillion.

App-wise data comprises of customer-initiated transactions, B2C transactions, B2B transactions, and on-us transactions. On-us transactions are unprocessed and settled through the UPI Central System under NPCI.

Next up was another consistent runner-up, Google Pay, with 972.26 million transactions totaling to about Rs 2.073 trillion. Accordingly, PhonePe- and Google Pay-operated volume of transactions form 79% of overall P2P and P2M transactions volume.

Apart from the two reported players, only six other UPI service provider apps had transactions in the volume range of minimum eight figures. They were, in descending order, Paytm, Axis Bank, Amazon Pay, Yes Bank, BHIM, and ICICI Bank.

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All UPI players in the country have until December 2023 to comply with a new market cap norms that dictate a limit on the market share that each of the players can command.

Late March, UPI developer NPCI had released a nine-page standard operating procedure (SOP) to monitor the 30% market share cap for third party application providers (TPAP) such as Google Pay and PhonePe.

There was a total of 49 UPI apps in business in May, discounting those enabling transaction volume of less than 10,000.