PhonePe platform drove a cumulative 6.63 bn transactions in Q4

PhonePe’s digital payment trends report, titled, ‘PhonePe Pulse Q4’ (October-December) 2021, shows the tremendous pace at which the country is adopting digital payments. According to the report, merchant payments registered a 37% QoQ growth, hitting 3.15 billion transactions. Maharashtra becomes the first state to cross 1 billion transactions in any given quarter.

Key highlights of Q4:

• The PhonePe platform drove a cumulative 6.63 billion transactions in Q4, a 26% QoQ jump.
• The Total Payments Value (TPV) of transactions processed grew 26% QoQ to $155 billion, mirroring the growth in the number of transactions.
• Money transfers with UPI and merchant payments continued to register massive growth reaching 2.72 billion and 3.15 billion, respectively.
• 25 million merchants were digitised across 15,700 towns and villages in India, which continued to help offline merchant payments register tremendous growth

Further, the trend of digital payments becoming a pan-India habit, which was observed in Q3, continued in Q4 as well with 722 out of 726 districts in the country clocking positive growth in the number of registered users and digital transactions.

Geographically, Goa (71%), Andaman (41%), Assam (37%) were the top 3 states and Union Territories in terms of QoQ transaction growth. Maharashtra registered 27% growth and became the first state to cross a billion transactions in a quarter (1.01 billion transactions). Karnataka was a close second showing 24% QoQ growth and driving 932 million transactions.

Speaking on the release of the Q4 2021 Pulse insights, Karthik Raghupathy, Head of Strategy and Investor Relations at PhonePe, said, “As predicted in our Q3 report, we saw the merchant transactions register robust QoQ growth driven by the holiday season, festivities and multiple e-commerce shopping sales. The data and insights from Pulse clearly indicate that the fundamental shift we are seeing in consumer behavior towards contactless payments is here to stay. As digital payments become an ingrained habit for both customers and merchants, we expect to continue seeing a surge in volumes across use cases for Q1 2022 as well. We are excited to see what interesting insights and trends the next quarter will unveil.”

Launched in September 2021, PhonePe Pulse is India’s first interactive website with data, insights and trends on digital payments in the country. The PhonePe Pulse website showcases more than 2,000+ crore transactions by consumers on an interactive map of India.