For all the people who own a smartphone & do digital payments frequently, however not quite sure of which one to use – ” Google Pay vs PhonePe vs PayTM “, here is the complete guide clearing the path to choose one payment app that best suits you.
Technological advancements along with demonetization had made digital payments simple and adaptable, allowing to transact within a matter of seconds. Payment apps led to no more searching for money-change and no more waiting in the queues before ATMs, easing our lives.
And there’s not been just one, but a couple of digital payment platforms with big-tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta (whatsapp) starting out their own. Speaking of that, platforms like PayTM, PhonePe and Google Pay are the leading ones. India made a total of 7,422 digital payments altogether in 2020-2021 accounting for ₹8.27 lakh crores.
Although, it’s not quite possible to install all the three, if you have storage problem in your smartphone. Even if you make it possible, preferences would be there, of which app to feel secure, easy and use often. This page clears and directs you there.
What to look for?
Payments apps or literally any app you are using should be ahead of its peers’ in providing the best in all of these:
- Features: Unique features that will allow most number of bill payments like phone recharge, electricity bill, water bills and more.
- User-Interface: A clean and easy user-interface to head to what we want.
- App-Speed: Performance and speed of the app.
- Customer Support: A good customer-support on issues like ‘Pending transaction’, refund or the likely.
Features
The foremost thing to seek upon in an app of alike is its features, to know which platform offers the most features.
Here, PayTM dominates in providing more features than its peers. The Indian app offers digital wallet services that let users store money for prepaid payments, which is far more popular than PhonePe’s digital wallet. Apart from this, PayTM and PhonePe also offers insurance services, investments, which Google Pay lacks and the usual transactions via QR code, UPI payments and billings. Google Pay as of now, only offers UPI payments, QR code payments and recharge and house-bills, but is soon expected to issue the purchase of Health Insurance from its app after partnering with SBI General Insurance.
Indeed, PayTM and PhonePe also allows debit-card and credit-card payments, which Google Pay hasn’t offered though for all payment-services. Regardless of the transaction amount, all the apps provide rewards and offers for the transaction you do.
Bottomline: GPay concentrates only on digital payments, PhonePe expands its focus on billings and insurances while PayTM has the edge providing ticket-bookings, metro-rail recharges, features like split-bill and more. PayTM has more features.
Next concerning aspect for payment apps is user-interface.
User-Interface
Guiding what you want to do, is what a good UI refers to. When I was first experimenting the apps, I found it easy to initiate transactions, the first being the easiest – PayTM, PhonePe and Google Pay, do recharge and billing stuffs conveniently in PhonePe. Google Pay makes it easy to do payments to frequent merchants / accounts, however it made me to search a little bit for few options. PayTM and PhonePe have more comparable interfaces, buttons and icons, except in the fact that PayTM provides enough space between icons, that PhonePe doesn’t concentrate on.
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Being more prone to smartphones, I found it less difficult to head through all the features of the apps. So, I thought of experimenting with my 50+ old dad. To be frank, my father was easily negotiable with PayTM & PhonePe than any other app.
(it’s based on my own / my surrounding’s experience. I recommend to experiment on your own).
App-Speed
This is vital in digital payments, as poor speed and transactions will divert people to not use the app. Google Pay’s comparatively often gets into “Pending transaction” which is quite bothering. On the other hand, PayTM and PhonePe are far easier to use. And PayTM along with PhonePe, refunds money of failed transactions much faster than its fellow Google Pay.
Coming to app speed, real video experiments show that, PayTM won the race, followed by PhonePe (behind by just 1 second) and then by Google Pay.
Customer Support
At times, your transaction may be showing ‘Pending’ for a prolonged time, though the money has been debited from your bank account. Most of the pending transactions fail and it happens to many people across all the apps. However, a good app should refund the debited amount as soon as possible to your bank account. And these payments app take these much of time for the refund process.
For Transactions using UPI: PayTM – 3 to 5 days; PhonePe – 3 to 5 days; Google Pay – upto 3 business days.
For Transactions using Credit / Debit Cards: PayTM – 7 to 14 business days; PhonePe – 7 to 9 business days; Google Pay – 3 to 10 business days.
Note: The above mentioned time period is the maximum for the respective platforms, meaning you may get the refund within seconds or minutes to the maximum time mentioned.
Experimentally, PhonePe and PayTM have a good refund-processing system than Google Pay.
Recharging & Bill Payments
Google Pay’s interface is not clear as its peers, making it less easy for users to make payments, as it puts unwanted payment-checklists that you had done before in front of the bill-payment categories. PhonePe and Paytm have a clear interface, so they already have an edge over Google Pay. So, both PhonePe and Paytm win this round.
Here’s the summary compared of all-abouts of the apps.
| Checklist | PayTM | PhonePe | Google Pay |
| Features | 1 | 0.5 | 0 |
| User-Interface | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| App-Speed | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Recharge & Bill Payments | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Customer Support | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 5 | 4.5 | 1 |
Clearly, PayTM is the winner with PhonePe closely matching it. And Google Pay though failed the round, it’s all of comparison. It actually does good when you don’t compare. If you ask my choice, I prefer using PhonePe for all bill-payments and transactions due to its great customer-support.
Which one is more suitable for you?
As the payment apps each have its own peculiarity, you could choose the one that matches with your need of using them. It may vary for people based on locations and the purpose they are approaching for. Here you will get explained in detail.
PayTm for More Features
PayTM comes first when it comes to features and bookings that it offer in its app. The app might be best suitable for people who are often into booking of cinema-tickets, entertainment-shows, or concerts that happen in India. Also, if you are living in a metropolitan cities or Tier-1 of India like Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata & so on, the app might be handy for you. Users can also do Metro recharge in PayTM wherein other apps can’t avail that.
PayTM also has an of-note feature “Split bill” which could be greatly useful for bachelors or hostellers who share their rooms. The feature splits the bills with your contacts easing it to pay the lenders.
PhonePe for Billings & Insurance
Though PayTM also avail billings, PhonePe stands out in billing processes covering all your monthly payment-bills, notifying you and making it simpler to finish them. PhonePe indeed covers your health, bike, car and personal accident insurances.
In my personal experience, PhonePe works good with even 3G internet, which I realized when I was using BSNL network. PhonePe will be advantageous for the ones who are in charge of paying home-bills and insurance.
Google Pay for Offers & Rewards
GPay attracts users by providing more offers and rewards than others. It also conducts campaign-like tasks where users on have enough collectibles will be getting rewards. So, if you want more offers, cashbacks and rewards, GPay might be the one for you.
More about the Payment Apps:
PayTM
PayTM is an Indian multinational fintech company specializing in digital payment, e-commerce and financial services. Founded in August 2010 by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the company is headquartered in Noida, India. It’s base revenue costs ₹3,187.6 Crore as of 2021. The payment giant had around 9% of the UPI market share in 2021 registering transactions worth INR 6.7 Lakh Cr.
PhonePe
Like PayTM, PhonePe also resides to India, headquartered in Bengaluru, India. Digital payments, fintech, billings and insurances, this is what PhonePe holds after being founded in December 2015 by three engineers – Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin. PhonePe is now worth $5.5 billion (₹42,000 Crores). PhonePe accounts for ₹33.65 lakh crores worth transactions in 2021.
Google Pay
Introduced by Google, Google Pay serves the same, digital payment system providing transactions, purchases, billings and so on. Founded in May 2011, the app is now available in 42 countries as of 2022. The payment giant commanded a little over 37.5% of the total market share in 2021 with transactions worth INR 2.74 Lakh Cr.
(Disclaimer: The article and the conclusion are based on the writer’s perspective.)
(Credits to Tk.Subash for suggesting this topic!
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