Overcoming several hurdles, WhatsApp finally launched WhatsApp Pay in India last November. In the first month, the feature received a modest 0.31 million customer-initiated transactions. The figures grew rapidly to 0.81 million in December, but didn’t last long. According to NPCI’s latest statistics, WhatsApp Pay witnessed a decline in usage and stood at 0.56 million transactions in January 2021.
WhatsApp Pay Transaction Volume Declines
Going by the transaction volume numbers, it is evident that WhatsApp Pay has not received as much mass adoption from users as the Facebook-owned company would’ve hoped. The overall value of customer-initiated transactions, however, was on the rise. While the value stood at 13.87 crores in November, it increased to 29.72 crores in December, and 36.44 crores in January.
One key factor with the decline in WhatsApp pay transactions has to be WhatsApp’s controversial privacy policy update, which led users to switch to privacy-friendly secure messaging platforms such as Signal. Competition from other leading UPI apps such as Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm could be another reason why users didn’t feel the need to switch to WhatsApp Pay.
Speaking of the competition, the top UPI app in India as of January in terms of transaction volume is PhonePe, followed closely by Google Pay. PhonePe processed 968.72 million transactions in January, whereas Google Pay handled 853.53 million transactions during the same period.
The top five widely used UPI apps in India are as follows:
1. PhonePe – 968.72 million transactions
2. Google Pay – 853.53 million transactions
3. Paytm – 332.69 million transactions
4. Axis Bank – 71.96 million transactions
5. Amazon Pay – 46.30 million transactions
So, which UPI app do you use the most for payments? Let us know in the comments section below.
