After the announcement of new charges and Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) related to UPI, the digital payment system is once again in the news. The government has made it clear that there will be no charge on person to person i.e. P2P payment. However, the new MDR will be applicable on some large merchant transactions. Meanwhile, data from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows that the UPI app market is still dominated by the apps of two foreign companies. At the same time, government bank SBI or NPCI's own app BHIM is not at the forefront in the country's UPI market.
These two foreign companies are Walmart-backed PhonePe and Alphabet-backed Google Pay. According to NPCI data, both of them dominate the UPI market. These two companies account for more than 80 percent of the total UPI transaction volume. At the same time, big names like BHIM and SBI have not been able to make it even to the top-5.
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According to NPCI, about 8,375 crore transactions were done on UPI in the financial year 2022-23. It will increase to about Rs 20,353 crore in the financial year 2024-25. That means, in just a few years, the use of UPI increased very rapidly. This pace will continue even in the early months of 2026. The report recorded around 2,235 crore UPI transactions in April 2026, 2,320 crore in May, 2,272 crore in June, 2,366 crore in July and around 2,451 crore in August. This simply means that the use of UPI for everyday small and big payments is continuously increasing in India.
How did the grip of both become stronger in four years?
According to NCPI, there were 1,118.51 crore transactions on PhonePe and 790.74 crore transactions on Google Pay. Both the apps together had 1,909.25 crore transactions, which is about 78.3% of the total app transactions recorded in the report. Whereas, Paytm remained at third place with 196.79 crore transactions.
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In August 2022, there were 314.67 crore transactions on PhonePe and 221.27 crore transactions on Google Pay. At that time the total share of both the apps was around 80.1%. This increased to 81.8% in August 2023 and 86.8% in August 2024. At the same time, the combined share of both was around 82.4% in 2025 but it decreased to 78.3% in August 2026. That means, in four years, the transactions on both the apps increased by about two and a half times, but for the first time in 2026, the total share of both came below 80%.
Big names like BHIM and SBI behind
Transactions have also increased on other UPI apps like BHIM and SBI but their pace was different. In August 2022, there were 2.499 crore transactions of BHIM and 0.539 crore transactions of SBI app. In 2023, BHIM was Rs 2.461 crore and SBI was Rs 0.410 crore. In 2024, BHIM reached Rs 2.594 crore and SBI Rs 0.9 crore. BHIM will grow rapidly to Rs 10.017 crore by 2025, while SBI will grow to Rs 1.299 crore. In August 2026, BHIM reached 25.369 crore transactions and SBI 2.957 crore transactions.
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CRED figures are shocking
According to NCPI, CRED increased from 1.481 crore to 14.394 crore and WhatsApp increased from 0.672 crore to 18.369 crore transactions. Axis Bank apps did 14.678 crore transactions and Kotak Mahindra Bank apps did 13.779 crore transactions. The special thing is that in August 2026, CRED recorded a transaction value of Rs 57,398.05 crore despite only 14.394 crore transactions.