WEDNESDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2026

QHAAT

Today in Indian Retail

Payments

WhatsApp Pay more than doubles UPI volumes, enters top-eight apps

July tally hits 167.89 million transactions worth Rs 12,957 crore after NPCI onboarding curbs were lifted.

, Payments correspondent··4 min read

Smartphone screen showing UPI payment confirmation inside a messaging app interface
Smartphone screen showing UPI payment confirmation inside a messaging app interface

Meta’s WhatsApp Pay processed 167.89 million UPI transactions valued at Rs 12,957.07 crore in July 2026, more than doubling the year-earlier figure and moving it to eighth place by volume, ahead of Cred and Amazon Pay.

In July 2025 the service handled 74.6 million transactions worth Rs 5,412.58 crore. It first crossed the 100 million monthly mark in December 2025. Growth accelerated after NPCI removed user-onboarding restrictions in December 2024, roughly 19 months earlier.

PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm still dominate: PhonePe did 10.85 billion transactions in July, Google Pay 7.64 billion and Paytm 1.90 billion. WhatsApp’s rise shows the power of an existing messaging graph once regulatory gates open.

WhatsApp Pay clocked 167.89 million transactions worth Rs 12,957.07 crore in July.

The service remains a small slice of overall UPI, which continues to set global real-time payment records. Yet its trajectory matters for merchant acceptance inside chat and for any future commerce features layered on the same rails.

No change in the broader competitive order at the top, but the mid-tier is getting more crowded and more useful for everyday P2M flows.

Filed under Payments·Kabir Menon

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