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PhonePe processed half of all Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions by value in August while Sachin Bansal’s Navi Technologies overtook Amazon Pay in transaction volumes, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data showed.

In August, PhonePe processed payments worth Rs 10,33,264.34 crore, representing 50.14% of the Rs 20,60,735.57 crore worth of payments processed within the UPI system. This marks a slight increase from its 49.83% market share in July.

In terms of the number of transactions, PhonePe processed 7.23 billion transactions in August, which accounted for 48.36% of all transactions on UPI.

Navi, which launched UPI payments in August 2023, has already taken the fifth spot in terms of total transaction volumes, surpassing Amazon Pay, which entered the market in February 2019. In August 2024, Navi processed 88.71 million UPI transactions, compared to Amazon Pay’s 70.72 million.

Navi’s transaction volume surged by 29.56% from July when it processed 68.47 million transactions. In contrast, Amazon Pay saw a 2.3% month-on-month decline from 72.41 million transactions processed in July.

However, despite Navi’s higher transaction volume, Amazon Pay still leads in transaction value, processing Rs 3,092.89 crore more than Navi.

This rise in Navi’s performance may be attributed to its aggressive promotional tactics, such as offering cashback of up to Rs 10 per transaction.

After PhonePe, Google Pay was the second-most popular UPI app, processing 5,592.45 transactions worth Rs 7,42,223.07 crore. After Google Pay comes Paytm with 1.07 billion transactions processed worth Rs 1,13,672.16 crore.

After Paytm, the moat between top UPI players and the rest becomes starker. Kunal Shah’s CRED commands less than 1% market share processing 147.48 million payments, or 13% of what Paytm processes.

PhonePe’s Co-founder and CEO Sameer Nigam had recently revealed that the proposed 30% market share cap on UPI payments by the NPCI is delaying the company’s plans to go public. Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest, Nigam said, “I feel nervous going to the public market…when there’s a 30% market cap lurking.”

With PhonePe now holding half of UPI’s market share, Nigam expressed concerns about fairness to shareholders if they went public under current conditions. He also noted that operational readiness and regulatory compliance are additional factors holding back their IPO plans.