For the last few months, the growth in the number of UPI transactions has been below expectations. Industry experts expected the surge after the holiday season, but February remains no different, both in terms of UPI transactions volume and UPI transactions value.
According to the latest data from the National Payments Corp. of India aka NPCI, the number of UPI transactions, both in value and volume, fell marginally in February when compared to January 2021.
In February, NCPI recorded 2.29 billion UPI transactions against 2.30 billion in January, a negligible 0.4% MoM decline.
Similarly, the UPI transactional value recorded in the previous month stood at Rs 4.25 trillion, down from Rs 4.31 trillion in January, a 1.3% MoM decline.
The dip in the number of UPI transactions, both in value and volume, however, can mostly be attributed to the month having fewer days as compared to any other month in a year.
UPI Payments: Google Pay Continues To Loose Grip
Now, note here that technical glitches faced by Indian banks between November and January lead to Google Pay losing its position as the market frontrunner in UPI transactions. And that further resulted in PhonePe and Paytm Payments Bank taking the charge. Both continued to expand their market share and transaction count during the period.
In the month of February, the Walmart owned mobile payments firm PhonePe recorded 972 million UPI transactions, capturing 42% of the market. This is a negligible jump of 0.30% from 968.72 million UPI transactions, amounting to Rs 1.91 trillion, in January.
According to PhonePe, their merchant acceptance figure across India currently stands at 17.5 million which is quite similar to that of Paytm.
Instead of releasing the figure of UPI transactions, Paytm, in a statement, said that it has recorded 1.2 billion transactions in the month of February across its multiple offerings such as wallet, UPI, cards and net-banking. The company has shifted its focus to its combined wallet and payments bank ecosystem for some time. In January Paytm stood third in the tally of the UPI payment apps with 281.18 million UPI transactions amounting to Rs 0.33 trillion.
Paytm also mentioned how it has captured the highest market share amid offline merchant payments with 15% MoM growth. The company also revealed that the business app has over 17 million merchants at present with 8.5 million partners who hold a Paytm Payments Bank account.
GPay, on the other hand, is yet to reveal its transactional data for the month of February. In January, however, it processed 853.53 million transactions amounting to Rs 1.77 trillion.
It is quite notable of SBI, which processes the largest volume of UPI transactions among all banks in the country, improved its performance quotient in terms of technical glitch related decline rate in the month of January.
The public sector banking institution registered only a 1.44% technical decline rate in January as compared to 8.96% in December 2020. NCPI is yet to release UPI transaction failure rate data for the month of February.
All in all, we will now have our eyes glued for Q1 2021 results for UPI transactions after it crossed a record 6.5 billion transactions in Q4 2020. Stay tuned for more updated.
