India’s Unified Payments Interface continued its rapid expansion in March, with total transactions reaching around 22.6 billion and overall value touching approximately Rs 29.6 lakh crore, according to data released by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The figures mark one of the highest monthly volumes recorded on the platform, reflecting the continued scale-up of real-time digital payments across the country.
As per reports, PhonePe emerged as the first platform to cross the 10 billion monthly transaction mark, processing over 10 billion transactions during the month. In value terms, the platform handled transactions worth about Rs 14.48 lakh crore, maintaining a clear lead in both volume and value within the UPI ecosystem. The milestone highlights the platform’s growing share in everyday payment use cases, including peer-to-peer transfers and merchant payments.
Google Pay remained the second-largest player, processing around 7.5 billion transactions in March. The platform’s transaction value came close to Rs 10 lakh crore, indicating strong average ticket sizes despite a lower volume compared to PhonePe. Together, the two platforms continued to dominate the UPI landscape, accounting for a majority share of total transactions processed during the month.
Paytm held the third position, contributing a significantly smaller share in comparison. While it continues to remain part of the top three UPI apps, the gap between Paytm and the top two players remains substantial in both transaction volume and value.
The concentration of market share among a few large players has been an ongoing area of focus for NPCI, which has proposed a 30% market share cap for third-party UPI apps to maintain competitive balance. However, implementation of this cap has been deferred multiple times due to the complexity of redistributing user behaviour at scale.
The March performance underscores a broader structural shift in India’s payments ecosystem, where UPI is increasingly becoming the default mode for transactions across use cases. From small-ticket daily payments to high-value transfers, the steady rise in both transaction count and value indicates deeper adoption, higher frequency of use, and continued expansion of digital payment infrastructure.
