Paytm: A popular proverb in Hindi language says that someone else’s loss is someone else’s gain. Exactly the same is happening with Paytm, PhonePe and other online payment apps. RBI’s strict action against Paytm has caused a lot of loss to Paytm, but Paytm’s biggest competitor in India, PhonePe, has benefited a lot from this action of RBI.
Actually, RBI has announced to stop all the services of Paytm Payment Bank from 29th February. In such a situation, millions of Paytm users have started uninstalling the Paytm app from their phones. Users have started downloading other payment apps after uninstalling Paytm from their phones, and PhonePe is at the forefront of that list.
Paytm suffered huge loss
Data obtained from industry executives at market intelligence platform AppTweak revealed that the number of daily average downloads of the Paytm app on Google Play Store declined from 2.4 lakh to 1.4 lakh during February 1-7 compared to January 24-31.
Paytm’s biggest rival PhonePe has directly benefited from this. During this time period, PhonePe downloads have increased from 4.4 lakh to 5.5 lakh. Apart from PhonePe, BHIM APP has also benefited a lot from the action taken against Paytm App. This online payment app has also been downloaded by 3.6 lakh users after 1-7 February. Apart from these two, the number of downloads of Google Pay app has also reached close to 2 lakh. AppTweak said that the accuracy rate of download estimation is around 85-90%.
PhonePe got huge benefits
Karan Lakhwani, India head of AppTweak, told TOI, “PhonePe’s share in app downloads was already increasing. After the RBI directive on Paytm Payments Bank, the number of downloads for PhonePe increased even faster from January 31.
MobiKwik is a much smaller competitor compared to Paytm and PhonePe, but this payment app also gets an average of 45,000 daily downloads. Apart from this, data shows that between February 1-7, the average daily download of Paytm on Apple App Store was around 8000, while the average daily download of PhonePe was 25,000.
Including Apple App Store and Google Play Store, PhonePe has received about 40 lakh downloads, which is the highest so far. At second place is Bhim app, which has got total 25 lakh downloads. Although PhonePe has refused to comment on this, a Paytm spokesperson said that, we do not consider the market report as a reliable source. However, according to our internal report, we have achieved continuous growth in the last week also.
