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Super.money surged two spots to become the fifth-largest UPI payments platform in February, overtaking Cred and Axis Bank Apps.

The Flipkart Ventures-backed fintech app processed 139.1 million transactions, up from 124.8 million in January, with a total transaction value of Rs 4,812.4 crore.

While PhonePe and Google Pay continued to dominate, in February, almost every major UPI player saw a dip in transaction volumes compared to January, with PhonePe declining from 8,102.4 million to 7,656.4 million and Google Pay dropping from 6,183.9 million to 5,836.8 million.

The largest UPI platform, PhonePe’s total transaction value remained above Rs 11.18 lakh crore. Google Pay recorded a total value of Rs 7.71 lakh crore.

Paytm retained its third-place ranking, processing 1,079.6 million transactions in February, slightly down from 1,152.3 million in January. However, its transaction value increased marginally to Rs 1.17 lakh crore as it tried to revive merchant payments.

In contrast, Cred slipped to sixth place, despite handling 126.4 million transactions—down from 137.4 million in January—while still recording a high transaction value of Rs 45,127.7 crore.

The Indian government has significantly reduced its budget for promoting RuPay debit cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions.

According to official Budget 2025 documents, allocations for this incentive scheme have been slashed from Rs 2,484.97 crore in FY 2023-24 to a projected Rs 437 crore in FY 2025-26, marking an 82% decline in funding over two years. For FY 2024-25, the government initially allocated Rs 1,441 crore in incentives, later increasing it to Rs 2,000 crore in the revised estimates.

UPI incentives played a crucial role in enabling low-value transactions and ensuring a level playing field, preventing large players from dominating the market—especially in the absence of the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR).

MDR is a fee that merchants pay to banks or payment service providers for processing digital transactions. The government eliminated MDR charges on UPI in 2019 to promote digital payments, making UPI incentives a vital revenue source for smaller players to sustain themselves.