MediaNama reported that Reserve Bank of India statistics for prepaid payment instruments show a clear disconnect between the number of registered users and the volume of payments processed. At the close of September 2026, the country had 186.60 crore outstanding digital wallets, of which 97.65 crore met the regulatory definition of active. During that period, these instruments handled 63.45 crore commercial purchases valued at Rs 14,482.53 crore, along with 10.28 crore fund movements worth Rs 8,312.26 crore.
PhonePe maintained the largest user base, with 78.43 crore active wallets, or roughly 80.3% of the national total. However, the platform processed 5.26 crore commercial transactions worth Rs 503.79 crore and 1.17 crore transfers valued at Rs 1,503.79 crore. Tri O Tech Solutions, operating with just 1.11 crore active users, generated 17.30 crore purchases totaling Rs 1,581.71 crore and 8.06 crore transfers worth Rs 1,729.69 crore. The publication noted that this smaller player executed more than triple the commercial volume of PhonePe despite its much smaller subscriber base.
Other financial institutions also displayed high activity relative to their user counts. IDFC FIRST Bank logged 15.75 crore purchases worth Rs 3,064.98 crore from a base of 1.35 crore active users. Similarly, MobiKwik recorded 3.65 crore transactions valued at Rs 2,946.65 crore from 61.68 lakh active accounts. MediaNama explained that a wallet is classified as active if it sees at least one transaction within a year, meaning an account active at the month's end might have been idle during that specific month. Therefore, comparing monthly volumes directly with active user counts can misrepresent individual spending habits.
In the prepaid card segment, the regulator counted 49.76 crore outstanding cards, with 24.33 crore active. Pine Labs dominated this area, holding 16.37 crore active cards, which represents about 67.3% of the market. The firm processed 9.90 crore card transactions worth Rs 2,354.62 crore in September. Overall, commercial purchases through digital wallets formed the largest portion of all prepaid instrument activity, while card-based fund transfers remained the smallest category.