Major Unified Payments Interface (UPI) apps PhonePe and Google Pay together accounted for 77.8% of UPI transactions in September 2026, noticeably down from their market share of 78.3% in the previous month, reveals the National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) UPI Applications data. While PhonePe processed 10.91 billion transactions which makes 45.57% of the UPI market share, Google Pay processed 7.71 billion transactions, occupying a market share of 32.23%.
The listed-app shares use 23.93 billion transactions through NPCI-listed apps as their denominator, rather than the 24.07 billion transactions across UPI in NPCI’s UPI data. However, there is no overall total for listed UPI apps published by NPCI. It also clubs all UPI apps with less than 20,000 monthly transactions into one category called the “Other Apps”.
Key observations
The top two lost share: Their combined share was 81.9% in September 2025. Over the year, Google Pay’s share fell by 3.2 percentage points from 35.43% and PhonePe’s by 0.9 percentage points from 46.47%.
Other apps gained ground: Paytm remained third in September with 1.94 billion transactions, or 8.1% of listed-app volume. Navi was fourth at 1.14 billion, up from 1.08 billion in August, followed by super.money at 405.1 million transactions. Kotak Mahindra Bank Apps moved up to ninth place from 11th in NPCI’s UPI Applications data.
UPI market share still above NPCI cap: Both PhonePe and Google Pay’s September shares were above the 30% level in NPCI’s volume-cap circular-in-UPI for third-party app providers. That circular extended the compliance deadline for existing providers to December 31, 2026. The rule measures an app’s share against overall UPI volume over the preceding three months on a rolling basis; a single month’s share of listed-app volume is not the compliance measure. September’s app table cannot establish whether either app breached the rule.
Also Read:
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- How the govt’s role in pricing UPI is making MDR look like GST
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