Over their lifetimes, the 10 best-funded companies in the ecosystem have raised about $9.4 billion. Paytm leads with $2.8 billion, followed by PhonePe at $1.7 billion and CRED at $1.5 billion.
| Photo Credit:
India’s payments ecosystem built around the unified payments interface (UPI) has attracted about $5.8 billion in private equity funding across 371 disclosed rounds since 2021, with capital increasingly concentrating around a handful of scaled players, according to a Tracxn report.Consumer-facing payments companies accounted for the largest share of funding at about 53 per cent, or nearly $3.1 billion, followed by business payments at 38 per cent or around $2.2 billion. Payments’ infrastructure and enablers, including APIs and other underlying technology, accounted for the remaining 9 per cent, or about $526 million.The concentration of capital is particularly pronounced among the top five recipients. CRED, PhonePe, Pine Labs, Razorpay and BharatPe together accounted for about 66 per cent of the disclosed funding since 2021. CRED and PhonePe raised roughly $1 billion each during the period, while Pine Labs, Razorpay and BharatPe raised $641 million, $535 million and $440 million, respectively.The report said the funding trend peaked during the 2021 start-up boom before correcting through 2022-24, with a tentative recovery in 2026, driven largely by CRED’s $540 million funding round.Top playersOver their lifetimes, the 10 best-funded companies in the ecosystem have raised about $9.4 billion. Paytm leads with $2.8 billion, followed by PhonePe at $1.7 billion and CRED at $1.5 billion.The ecosystem is also showing signs of maturity through exits and consolidation. Since 2021, payments companies have recorded eight IPOs and 25 acquisitions. Public market exits include Paytm, Pine Labs, MobiKwik and Zaggle.At the same time, larger funded companies are increasingly becoming acquirers. Razorpay has acquired Ezetap and IZealiant, while Pine Labs has acquired Setu and Mosambee. M2P, Juspay, PayU and Perfios have also pursued acquisitions to add capabilities, indicating consolidation around larger full-stack platforms.The report highlighted UPI’s growing international footprint as another development. Cross-border UPI transactions rose more than 20-fold from about 37,060 in FY24 to over 7.5 lakh in FY25, while the payment rail is now live in more than 12 countries.Tracxn said the next phase will also depend on how the UPI ecosystem is funded. While UPI itself has created a large transaction base, private capital has financed products and capabilities around the rail, including credit-on-UPI, cross-border payments and fraud prevention. The report said the sustainability of both the public payment rail and the commercial ecosystem around it will be critical to the next phase of growth.Published on August 13, 2026
