The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) saw a 13.6% increase in transaction volume in March, reaching 18.30 billion transactions. The top five UPI apps, PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, Navi and Super.money, maintained their rankings.
IPO‑bound fintech start-up PhonePe retained its leading position in the UPI market in March, processing 864.7 crore transactions, accounting for 47.25% of total UPI transactions. On a month‑over‑month (MoM) basis, this reflected a 0.28% decrease in market share from 765.6 crore transactions.
PhonePe handled a total transaction value of Rs 12.57 lakh crore during the month. In terms of transaction value, the Walmart‑backed fintech company accounted for 50.74% of the total UPI transaction volume in March 2025.
CRED slipped to seventh place, overtaken by Axis Bank. This follows a similar shift in February when Super.money displaced CRED from the top five rankings. According to NPCI data, Axis Bank surpassed CRED by recording 125 million B2C transactions in March. B2C (business‑to‑customer) transactions in the UPI system refer to payments made by businesses to customers, such as refunds, salaries or rebates.
Overall, UPI transactions in the country hit a new high of 18.30 billion in March, recovering from a 5% drop to 16.11 billion in February. March's transaction value totaled Rs 24.77 lakh crore, a 12.8% month‑on‑month (MoM) increase from Rs 21.96 lakh crore in February.
UPI Outage
UPI systems on Wednesday faced disruptions, with numerous reports of transaction failures across India. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees UPI operations, acknowledged the outage and stated that it was working to resolve the issue, hours after multiple users reported problems.
“NPCI is currently facing intermittent technical issues, leading to partial UPI transaction declines. We are working to resolve the issue and will keep you updated. We regret the inconvenience caused,” the NPCI said in a post on X.
This marks the second UPI outage this month. On April 2, users of certain banks' UPI payment servers experienced brief periods of slowness following procedural complications on April 1 due to the fiscal year‑end. Services were restored in both instances.
