Escaping The UPI Paradox To Chase Profits

If scale were the sole metric of success, PhonePe’s 2025 would be an open-and-shut case of everything going just according to plan.

Commanding a staggering 46% of India’s UPI market, the Bengaluru-based fintech not only held its ground against arch-rivals Google Pay and Paytm but widened the gap, processing billions of transactions month after month. Yet, in the zero-MDR landscape of Indian payments, ubiquity does not automatically translate to solvency.

For years, a single question has loomed over the company: can this colossus of…