July figures released by the National Payments Corporation of India show how heavily UPI activity is concentrated among a few apps. PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm together accounted for 86.28% of transaction volume, leaving a much smaller portion for other providers.

Walmart-backed PhonePe handled 10.86 billion payments, compared with 10.48 billion a month earlier. Its share of transaction volume reached 45.89%, while payments routed through the app totalled ₹14.44 lakh crore. Second-placed Google Pay recorded 7.65 billion payments worth ₹10.01 lakh crore, giving it a 32.33% volume share.

Paytm stayed third as its transaction count increased from 1.80 billion in June to 1.90 billion in July. It represented 8.05% of volume and processed roughly ₹2.05 lakh crore. Together, PhonePe and Google Pay alone accounted for more than 78% of UPI transactions.

Among smaller providers, Navi ranked fourth with 947.08 million transactions. CRED slipped to tenth by volume but handled payments totalling ₹59,279 crore. Axis Bank’s apps collectively recorded 143.77 million payments worth ₹13,940 crore, while WhatsApp registered 167.89 million transactions. These figures underline the sizeable gap between the leading third-party apps and other participants.