UPI October 2020: P2M vs P2P, PhonePe takes the crown, Paytm fastest growing on P2M, CRED continues to shine

Last week was a big one for UPI with 2 major announcements which may have some far reaching impact on the overall payments ecosystem. 30% cap along with WhatsApp allowed to offer payments to 20mn users has shaken things up. I plan to share a separate note on that.

In the meanwhile, UPI continues to grow unabated. It grew by over 10% in October. We expect November to be even bigger (first 5 days of Nov are 14% higher than Oct)

In this writeup, I plan to focus more on P2M data as I personally believe that’s a true barometer of our digital revolution with more people feeling comfortable scanning QRs or linking UPI across multiple Apps to pay.

Here are the big numbers: UPI October 2020

Paytm was the fastest growing UPI app in October although they are still a distant no.3 player. PhonePe had a great pre-diwali month in which they surpassed Gpay to be the no.1 UPI App of India.

Let’s talk about P2M (Person to Merchant) payments:

For the first time, P2M crossed 40% of overall transactions. Average ticket size of P2M is ₹650 vs ₹2700 for P2P (because many use UPI for business payments replacing IMPS)

PhonePe vs Gpay vs Paytm — P2M share

Once again, Paytm was the fastest growing UPI App in October with a massive 40% over September. Gpay was the slowest and the reasons are unknown yet. Overall P2M grew 10% MoM so Gpay surely performed badly vs others.

These are in-app figures, all these apps power UPI payments on big merchants which is additional. Excluded to avoid double counting. For eg, almost millions of UPI transactions of CRED, Dream11, Zomato etc are attributed to them while they may be PhonePe, Gpay or Paytm users.

However, in value terms, Paytm edged past Gpay by clocking over ₹3500cr. PhonePe remains a clear leader on all parameters.

These are in-app figures, all these apps power UPI payments on big merchants which is additional. Excluded to avoid double counting. For eg, crores being paid using UPI in CRED, Dream11, Zomato etc are attributed to them while they may be PhonePe, Gpay or Paytm users.

Now let’s find out the Top consumer apps on UPI (amount spent in the app/website using UPI as a payment option)

I published this data last month (excluded Gpay as their data was staggered over QR, online, P2P2M but managed to collate that this month). My last blog garnered over 2 lakh views so I decided to do a follow up on those numbers.

Above values are UPI figures only. Each of these apps/websites offer several ways for consumers to pay

I would like to highlight BharatPe separately as they are the most unique UPI players in the ecosystem. BharatPe only does offline merchant acquiring and compete with Paytm, PhonePe & Gpay on QR payments. Just on QR payments, they are looking like the most promising startup in this space with stellar growth in October. They are no.2 player behind PhonePe on UPI QR merchants but growing faster than them.

Performance of other large startups on UPI P2M payments:

MPL (which also runs fantasy cricket in addition to several other cash based casual games) also grew 40% in October albeit on a small base as compared to Dream11. They processed 6mn UPI transactions generating a GMV of ₹73 crores.

My rough back of the envelope calculations says dream11 would have clocked “revenues” of over 400cr in October alone (Rough maths: Money added → Multiple games played (GMV = money added x 2.5/3x) → Rake (x% of each game). IPL spnsorship paid for itself it seems.

Average transaction size on Flipkart is 1.8x of Amazon (more mobile sales probably). Note: these is just UPI, their GMV is much higher than this including cards, netbanking, COD)

Zomato declared that they are at pre-covid levels and UPI numbers reflect that too

I also decided to include 2 popular payment Gateways processing UPI transactions. Both have grown 20% MoM.

Note: This is GMV processed through their UPI handles across thousands of small merchants. This only represents the long tail merchant data who are on shared ID. They also power some big merchants (including Zerodha & CRED) which have their own acquiring handles so in all likelihood both these PGs are processing a much larger GMVs through their gateways. But I included this to highlight how even long tail merchants are getting bigger on UPI.

These are values processed through their UPI handles across thousands of merchants. They also power some big merchants which have their own acquiring handles so in all likelihood both these PGs are processing a much larger GMVs through their gateways. This data shows the long tail merchant GMV.

More data will be added here as & when available…..

Top UPI merchants — Zerodha, CRED & BharatPe are 3 big surprises

Disclaimer: most of this data is derived through my analysis from interactions with industry stakeholders hence there is no single source of data which I can quote here. Please do your own research before further using this data for your own analysis as I don’t claim 100% accuracy.

for those asking the source of this story :)

I will be happy to hear your feedback on this. Feel free to comment here or tag me on twitter @deepakabbot or mail me at dabbot@gmail.com