Google Pay leads UPIs in digital payments, Amazon Pay most favoured wallet

Among UPI (unified payments interface) apps, Google Pay contributed 59 per cent and Walmart-owned PhonePe facilitated 26 per cent, followed by Paytm (7 per cent) and BHIM (6 per cent) in digital transactions in 2019, according to fintech firm Razorpay’s report ‘The Era of Rising Fintech.’ The report provides an in-depth study of a rapidly evolving fintech ecosystem in India and analyses the patterns of digital transactions and the impact of industry innovations, such as UPI, which are harnessing a digitally inclusive economy. In 2018, Google Pay contributed 48 per cent and BHIM facilitated 27 per cent in digital transaction, followed by PhonePe (15 per cent) and Paytm (4 per cent).

Also, Amazon Pay was the most preferred wallet among consumers (33 per cent), followed by Ola Money (17 per cent) in 2019. While the usage of cards (46 per cent) and Net banking (11 per cent) saw a decline in 2019, down from 56 per cent and 23 per cent respectively in 2018, UPI (38 per cent) went up from 17 per cent in 2018.

“A growth of 338 per cent in digital payments in a year (2018-19) is massive. It’s the highest we’ve seen so far in the country. Among other factors that led to this exponential growth, it was UPI which rose in prominence, dominating other modes of transactions,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder of Razorpay. “For the first time in the history of digital payments, we saw UPI overtaking cards. UPI has become the preferred choice not only for P2P(peer-to-peer) payments but also for P2M (peer-to-merchants) payments.” 

All the findings in this report are based on transactions held on the Razorpay platform from January 2018 to December 2019. According to the report, Bengaluru was among the most digitised city (23.31 per cent), whereas Delhi, climbed up the ladder to the second spot (10.44 per cent) followed by Hyderabad (7.61 per cent). In 2018, Bengaluru scored 29.26 per cent followed by Hyderabad (9.02 per cent) and Delhi (8.36 per cent). 

In terms of the top States, in 2019, Karnataka saw the highest adoption of digital payments (26.64 per cent) followed by Maharashtra (15.92 per cent) and Delhi NCR (13.01 per cent). The top 3 sectors in digital payment adoption for 2019 were food and beverage (26 per cent), financial services (12.5 per cent) and transportation (8 per cent). 

“In 2020, the trust will be bigger than convenience in digital payments,” said Mathur. “From banks to fintechs and government bodies to payment networks, all these forces will need to collaborate to build unique solutions aligned to amplifying customer trust,” said Mathur.