Here’s what the home screen of Google Pay, India’s second-largest UPI app, looks like.

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Compare it to the home screen of its two biggest competitors, Phonepe and Paytm*.

L: Phonepe; R: Paytm

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Do you sense a pattern? While all of them are payments apps, notice how Paytm and Phonepe have devoted considerable real estate to crossselling and upselling financial products and services like insurance, loans, and rent payments? 

Google Pay doesn’t seem to want to nudge you to do anything other than, well, pay someone. This makes it appear much more focused, functional, and just… cleaner. While Paytm and Phonepe are trying hard to sell you something, Google Pay seems indifferent. 

So, if the home screens of apps are proxies for how companies think about their products, one obvious question that’s worth asking is—is this a sign of an underlying complacency? Is Google Pay vulnerable to disruption from sharper, younger, hungrier competitors? 

It’s what we discuss in the latest episode of Two by Two—Google Pay’s precarious position, and how it stands out as an anomaly. 

Google Pay is India’s second-largest UPI payments app with a market share of 38%, clocking 500+ crore transactions a month. It’s one of the world’s mightiest companies, and yet, we argue that it’s possibly in a vulnerable, strange position. By this, we don’t necessarily mean that it will disappear overnight, but that all kinds of competitors are coming for it. Already, its market share has declined from 44% to 37%. It’s an outpost of an empire that’s fighting a global war. And most importantly, the first wave of UPI is over, and the second phase is starting. UPI itself is changing and going through some transitions, and there are signs that Google Pay won’t be able to keep up.

To discuss Google Pay’s position, my co-host Rohin Dharmakumar and I invited two incredible guests, both sharp fintech operators, with a wealth of experience building UPI products. 

First, there’s Abhishek Madan, Vice President of Product at Paytm. Abhishek is responsible for building and scaling Paytm’s UPI product, and understands a thing or two about how consumer apps work. In his words, he’s “a creative person who loves making consumer products that people enjoy using”. He had a lot to say about Google Pay, UPI, and everything else, but the part that’ll stay with me is his vivid description of something he calls the “trust exit scam”.