The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) recorded a 13.6% increase in volume in March, reaching 18.30 billion transactions. While the top five UPI apps — PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, Navi, and Super.money — maintained their positions, CRED dropped to seventh place, overtaken by Axis Bank.
This follows a similar shift in February, when Super.money replaced CRED in the top five rankings.
Axis Bank moved ahead of CRED after recording 125 million B2C transactions in March, according to NPCI data. In the UPI system, B2C (business-to-customer) transactions include payments like refunds, salaries, or cashback that businesses send to customers.
With a commanding 47.25% market share by transaction volume, PhonePe retained its top position by processing 8.64 billion transactions. Google Pay followed closely with 36.04%, handling 6.59 billion transactions. Together, the two giants controlled over 83% of the UPI transaction volume.
Paytm, the third largest player, contributed a 6.67% share (1.22 billion transactions).
In terms of transaction value, PhonePe again led with a 50.76% market share, handling over Rs 12.57 lakh crore, followed by Google Pay at 34.99% (Rs 8.66 lakh crore).
CRED, despite a modest volume share of 0.79%, emerged as a high-value player and contributed Rs 55,091.22 crore, or 2.22% of the total value. This reflects the firm’s positioning among high-value users.
Other apps like Amazon Pay, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank had a relatively minor presence in terms of both volume and value but still catered to specific user segments.
In a recent development, the Indian government approved a new scheme with a budget of Rs 1,500 crore to encourage small merchants to use digital payments through the BHIM-UPI platform.