WhatsApp Pay Usage Declines in January 2021

Feb. 6, 2021

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 controversialprivacy policy update, which led users to switch to privacy-friendlysecure messaging platformssuch asSignal. 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, thetop 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.

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.