Facebook-owned WhatsApp continues to witness poor response for its payments service in India. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) released UPI data for the month of January 2021. PhonePe continues to lead the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments market in India with an overall transaction volume of 968.72 million and Rs 1,91,973.77 crore transaction value. Google Pay is second on the list, followed by Paytm Payments Bank App, Axis Bank Apps and Amazon Pay. The NPCI data revealed shows WhatsApp's January 2021 UPI transaction volume witnessed a massive dip, but the overall transaction value of WhatsApp Pay increased. Overall, UPI registered 2302.73 million transactions in the month accounting for Rs 4,31,181.89 crore transaction value.
UPI Transactions in India Reach All-Time High in January 2021
In contrast, the overall UPI transactions registered in December 2020 were 2,234.16 million and it saw an increase to 2302.73 million during the first month of 2021. The transaction value also saw an increase to Rs 4,31,181.89 crore from Rs 4,16,176.21 crore. PhonePe is leading the chart with 968.72 million transaction volume and Rs 1,91,973.77 crore overall transaction value. On the other hand, Google Pay is on a steady ship with 853.53 overall transaction volume and Rs 1,77,791.47 crore transaction value.
In December, WhatsApp clocked 0.81 million transactions accounting for Rs 29.72 crore transaction value. This is down to 0.56 million transaction value in January and Rs 36.44 crore overall transaction value.
PhonePe managed to beat Google Pay for the second consecutive month- both in terms of overall transaction value & volume. Google Pay users are facing a lot of issues while transferring money, whereas PhonePe is as swift as possible. WhatsApp would be disappointed looking at its payments services in India. That said, the instant messaging platform is late to the party, thanks to pending approvals from NPCI. WhatsApp is now rolling out full-fledged payments service to its users across the country. Since users are inclined towards Google Pay and PhonePe in India, the growth for WhatsApp Pay seems unlikely.
