Walmart’s PhonePe Grabs 40 Pct Of India’s Digital Payments Market

Walmart-owned PhonePe, a digital payment provider, continues to reel in new customers in India, where it now has 250 million users.

PhonePe “reached a big milestone and also broke a few records along the way” in October, according to a company blog post. The company also noted that October marked 100 million monthly active users, 2.3 billion app sessions and 925 million transactions, and pushed it up to a market share of 40 percent for standard transactions.

CEO Sameer Nigam said PhonePe is “on a mission to make digital payments a way of life for every Indian citizen,” with a target of having 500 million registered users by December of 2022. He said PhonePe will “continue to launch new and innovative products for every strata of Indian society, as well as enable digital payment acceptance across every merchant in every village and town in India.’’

“Digital payments adoption in India has been booming over the last few years,” he said, adding that the company has “led this adoption for customers across age groups, urban and rural areas, and income levels. This phenomenal growth is driven by the best-in-class payments success rates, fastest speed of transactions and an easy-to-use user interface, which the PhonePe app offers.”

Both Google Pay and PhonePe are collaborating with the National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) to offer recurring payments. The deal will enable customers to opt-in for automatic monthly payments for such things as utility bills, installment payments, subscriptions and insurance premiums. The two apps have as many as 70 million users.

India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was adopted four years ago. It was established by the country’s central bank and is owned by a group of local lenders. The platform’s transaction volume soared to a record 1.34 billion in June as COVID-19 changed shopping habits.

PhonePe said it processed 835 million UPI transactions, for a market-leading share of over 40 percent.