The National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) UPI Applications table for September 2026 shows that the two largest third‑party UPI apps, PhonePe and Google Pay, together accounted for 77.8% of transactions processed through NPCI‑listed apps in that month.
PhonePe handled 10.91 billion transactions in September, equal to 45.57% of the listed‑app volume, while Google Pay processed 7.71 billion, or 32.23%. The table uses a denominator of 23.93 billion transactions — the total through NPCI‑listed apps — rather than the 24.07 billion transactions reported in NPCI’s broader UPI data for the month.
What changed in the rankings
Key movements in the September table include:
- PhonePe and Google Pay saw a small month‑on‑month decline in combined listed‑app share (77.8% in September vs 78.3% in August 2026).
- Paytm remained third with 1.94 billion transactions, representing 8.1% of listed‑app volume.
- Navi moved to fourth with 1.14 billion transactions, up from 1.08 billion in August.
- smaller apps such as super.money (405.1 million transactions) and Kotak Mahindra Bank Apps (which climbed to ninth place from 11th) also gained ground.
Regulatory context and what it means
NPCI’s volume‑cap circular for third‑party app providers sets a 30% cap on an app’s share of overall UPI volume, measured over the preceding three months on a rolling basis. The circular extended the compliance deadline for existing providers to 31 December 2026.
September’s single‑month shares for PhonePe and Google Pay were both above the 30% level, but NPCI’s compliance metric is explicitly the three‑month rolling share of overall UPI volume, not a single month’s listed‑app proportion. As a result, the September table alone cannot determine whether either app breached the cap.
The difference between the NPCI‑listed‑apps denominator (23.93 billion) and NPCI’s overall monthly UPI figure (24.07 billion) also matters because the circular measures an app’s share against the overall UPI volume over the rolling period. Analysts and regulators typically rely on the three‑month rolling calculation to assess compliance, and monthly fluctuations in listed‑app totals can cause short‑term percentage shifts without signalling a sustained breach.
Implications for users and the market
For consumers, the immediate effects are limited: UPI payment flows and the ability to pay with preferred apps remain intact. The data do, however, indicate a gradual redistribution of transaction volume beyond the top two apps compared with September 2025, when PhonePe and Google Pay together held 81.9% of listed‑app volume. Over the year, Google Pay’s listed‑app share fell by 3.2 percentage points (from 35.43%), and PhonePe’s by 0.9 percentage points (from 46.47%).
For the industry and regulators, the trend highlights growing activity among other UPI players, including fintechs and bank apps. Whether that represents a durable shift in user behaviour or normal month‑to‑month variation will be clearer once NPCI’s three‑month rolling figures cross the compliance deadline on 31 December 2026.
| Metric | September 2026 (NPCI listed apps) |
|---|---|
| Total listed‑app transactions | 23.93 billion |
| Total UPI transactions (NPCI monthly figure) | 24.07 billion |
| PhonePe transactions | 10.91 billion (45.57%) |
| Google Pay transactions | 7.71 billion (32.23%) |
| PhonePe + Google Pay share | 77.8% |
| Paytm transactions | 1.94 billion (8.1%) |
NPCI’s published table also groups apps with fewer than 20,000 monthly transactions into an “Other Apps” category, which masks the granularity at the very small‑app end of the market.
In short, September’s NPCI data show a modest erosion in top‑two dominance within the listed‑apps universe and growing volume for several other players, but regulatory compliance under NPCI’s cap will be assessed using a three‑month rolling measure through to the end of December 2026.
