61
/
2
Min Read
India’s payments ecosystem built around the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has attracted around USD 5.8 billion across 371 disclosed equity funding rounds since 2021, according to a Tracxn report. The ecosystem has also recorded eight IPOs and 25 acquisitions during the period.
UPI processed around INR 314 lakh crore across 24,162 crore transactions in FY26, averaging nearly 66 crore transactions a day and accounting for close to half of real-time payments globally. Consumer-facing payments companies accounted for 53% of the funding, or around USD 3.1 billion. Business payments received 38%, or USD 2.2 billion, while payment infrastructure and API companies accounted for 9%, or USD 526 million.
Funding has remained concentrated among a few companies. CRED and PhonePe received around USD 1 billion each during the period, followed by Pine Labs at USD 641 million, Razorpay at USD 535 million and BharatPe at USD 440 million. Together, the five companies accounted for about 66% of disclosed funding since 2021.
The 10 best-funded payments companies have raised around USD 9.4 billion over their lifetimes. Paytm leads with USD 2.8 billion, followed by PhonePe at USD 1.7 billion and CRED at USD 1.5 billion.
The ecosystem has also seen exits through public listings and acquisitions. Paytm, MobiKwik, Zaggle and Pine Labs are among the payments companies that have listed since 2021. Razorpay acquired Ezetap and IZealiant, while Pine Labs acquired Setu and Mosambee.
Cross-border UPI transactions grew more than 20-fold from around 37,060 in FY24 to over 7.5 lakh in FY25. The payment rail is now live in more than 12 countries with NPCI International working through connectivity, local rail-building and open-standard models.
The report also notes that processing a UPI transaction costs around 0.25% of its value, while government incentives have covered around 10-11% of the estimated cost. A new provision allowing a Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on certain UPI transactions could provide another funding mechanism for the ecosystem.
This article was originally
published by the 
