Following the removal of onboarding limits in December 2024, WhatsApp Pay has surged into the top tier of India’s UPI apps, processing over 167 million transactions in July 2026 and surpassing rivals Cred and Amazon Pay.
WhatsApp Pay has climbed into the upper tier of India’s fast-growing UPI market after processing 167.89 million transactions worth ₹12,957.07 crore in July 2026, according to Business Today. The tally pushed the Meta-owned payments service past Cred and Amazon Pay, making it the eighth-largest UPI app by volume. Even so, it still trails the market leaders by a wide margin, with PhonePe handling 10.85 billion transactions, Google Pay 7.64 billion and Paytm 1.90 billion in the same month.
The surge marks a sharp acceleration for a service that was comparatively small only a year earlier. Business Today reported that WhatsApp Pay processed 74.6 million transactions worth ₹5,412.58 crore in July 2025 and crossed 100 million monthly transactions for the first time in December 2025. The numbers suggest the product has gained traction quickly as users have become more comfortable sending money through the chat app they already use every day.
A key turning point came when the National Payments Corporation of India removed restrictions on user onboarding in December 2024, ending the phased cap that had limited WhatsApp Pay’s growth. According to Financial Express and other Indian business publications, the change allowed the service to expand beyond earlier limits and offer UPI payments to its full user base in India, which is estimated at more than 500 million people. NPCI had first approved WhatsApp Pay’s launch on UPI in November 2020 under a multi-bank model, initially allowing 20 million users before gradually lifting the cap.
WhatsApp Pay launched in partnership with ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, State Bank of India and Jio Payments Bank, with the aim of letting users send and receive money without leaving WhatsApp. Its latest rise shows that the app is still far from challenging the biggest payment platforms, but it is now moving faster than many of its smaller rivals in a market where scale and user convenience can change quickly.
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