It has been such a close race to capture the online payments market in India. From 30,000 feet all the three apps, Google Pay, Phone Pe and Paytm seem essentially the same in terms of making UPI transactions. Nothing in particular stands out in any app until you actually dig deeper and understand what’s going on.
Comparitive Analysis
Note: Scoring for each factor is relative and out of 5, where 5 represents the best score and 1 represents the worst score for that factor
Business Strategy
Brand Building
Brand is basically what instantly comes to your mind when you hear the company’s name. As of date, Paytm has forayed in multitude of businesses, from payments to travel, insurance and gaming. As a result it does not have a clear image in people’s minds as to what it stands for, or what is it best at. However, when someone hears Phone Pe, smooth and hassle free transaction experience instantly comes to mind, that is what it stands for. With Google Pay, same, hassle free transacting comes to mind, however it lags a bit behind Phone Pe in terms of hassle free transactions.
Business Expansion
After conquering UPI payments market, Phone Pe is moving ahead with vertical expansions. It is enabling users to make insurance purchases, mutual fund investments and recharges/bill payments from its platform. Google Pay has also expanded into recharges/bill payments services. However, all these services are natural extensions of a payments company, unlike the services provided by Paytm, some of which are in comlpletely different sectors.
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Apart from this, Phone Pe is doing something really smart. It is actively tapping into the largest market of offline payments, kirana stores. It is empowering kirana store owners by providing them with payment acceptance infrastructure, larger reach, by listing them on its platform, and CRM tools which help them analyze data and increase customer footfall. Till date, more than 25 million kirana store owners have been onboarded on Phone Pe for Business platform, which enables these owners to grow their business using technology.
Conclusion
As is clear from the above discussion, Phone Pe stands out in terms of its technological prowess, it is faster and more accurate than its competitors. It has an edge in terms of the overall user experience, the user journey is more delightful, smooth and hassle and hick-up free than that of Paytm and Google Pay.
In addition, Phone Pe has also done a brilliant job in building its brand by sticking to its core services and expanding around it. This leads to a higher recall in the minds of the users. They are now aggressively expanding into the largest offline transaction market, which would again give them a big push in acquiring and retaining the users.
Finally, some product improvement suggestions for Phone Pe from my end, if I may :)
Since Phone Pe earns major chunk of its money from advertisem*nts, if more premium space (high footfall) is available to display the ads, more will be the earnings.
2. Highlighting apps for which offer coupons have been rewarded by Phone Pe
Since Phone Pe advertises several apps on its platform and generates revenue, it should keep innovating the way it displays these ads, in order to increase the ad-revenue. One way I could come up with was to highlight the apps for which users have active rewards in the rewards section. This would increase the click-through rate and hence the ad-revenue.
