MobiKwik, a major player in the payments industry, aims to break into the top 10 UPI payment apps from its current 12th position, said CFO and co-founder Upasana Taku. The payments app is already a leader in the wallet space with an 18 to 20 percent market share and aims to rise in the overall bill payments space, she said. Fragments:
The company posted a net profit in the third quarter after several quarters of net losses. Would you remain profitable from now on?
Absolute. If you look at our past data, we were profitable and growing well until the second quarter of 2025. We’ve had a few quarters of disruption to the consumer credit cycle in unsecured lending. Even in Q2FY26, our EBITDA was only negative ₹6 crore, and this quarter we have posted an EBITDA margin of 5 percent and a PAT margin of 1.5 percent. Our focus from now on is on growing companies. These profit figures have been achieved through operating leverage and as we scale, we expect to remain profitable. Of course, we may not post a 5 percent profit margin every quarter; in some quarters the profit margin may increase or decrease depending on business movements.
What are the guidelines for gross merchandise value (GMV) growth?
From a consumer payments perspective, we are a major player. Consumer payments have three categories: UPI, wallet and bill payments. We have been the market leader in portfolios for the past two years, with a market share of 18-20 percent. At the sector level, the portfolio market has also grown by 44 percent between December 2024 and December 2025, according to RBI statistics. In terms of invoice payments, as in December, we are in seventh place; when it comes to the number of consumers using our app to pay bills, we ranked sixth in November. So we plan to get into the top five in this area as well.
UPI is of course the largest payment method in India. We have been among the top five fastest growing apps every quarter for the last three quarters, and our position has improved from 16th to 12th in terms of consumer transactions on our app using UPI. We plan to break into the top 10 UPI apps. We are focusing on UPI growth because we are able to cross-sell to users, be it wallet, bill payments or financial services. Overall, GMV payments have grown for twelve consecutive quarters and we plan to continue reaching a new peak every quarter.
Should MDR be charged for person-to-seller transactions at larger merchants?
It is extremely important. I know UPI is seen as a service for the public good, which is great, but there still has to be a place where money can be made. For example, we have literally thousands of sellers – online and offline – whose monthly turnover is over ₹1 crore. If your monthly turnover is more than ₹1 crore and you pay a fee for all other transactions such as credit card, debit card and net banking, why not pay for UPI?
Because the PIN costs also come from the same savings account. Large merchants can afford to pay for UPI transactions and they should. Five to 10 years ago, the share of UPI transactions in their daily total transactions was much lower. So they paid for payment processing for other transactions.
Currently, major merchants pay zero. Payment companies like us and banks pay for it. There are costs associated with maintaining that service. The costs for the cloud itself are high. The additional product and technology development costs for managing payment scale are also extremely high. So it is not sustainable to run these transaction services for zero. You may consider imposing MDR on sellers with a monthly turnover of more than ₹40 lakh and even ₹1 crore. Or for a transaction value of ₹2000 or ₹5000 or more. You can still keep free lower value transactions.
Your guidance on payout growth?
We don’t have specific guidance on the growth rate, but you can look at the growth rates over the past few quarters. In Q3 25, we had done ₹400 crore of personal loans and ₹250-₹300 crore of buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) loans. Now, BNPL has been discontinued as a product by lenders and fintech players. So in Q3FY26, BNPL doesn’t exist, but we have done ₹900 crore worth of personal loan disbursements. We should be able to grow by double digits on an annual basis. In terms of lenders, we have four major NBFCs and six other smaller lenders for providing personal loans and some smaller secured products.
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