Payments sector major MobiKwik is aiming to break into the top 10 UPI payments apps from its current 12th spot, said CFO and Co-Founder Upasana Taku. The payments app is already a leader in wallets space with 18-20 per cent market share, and is aiming to climb up in overall bill payments space, she said. Excerpts:
The company posted a net profit in Q3 after multiple quarters of net loss. Would you remain profitable from here on?
Absolutely. If you review our earlier data, till Q2FY25 we were EBITDA profitable and growing well. We took a hit for a few quarters due to disruption from a consumer credit cycle in unsecured lending. Even in Q2FY26, our EBITDA was negative ₹6 crore only, and this quarter we have posted 5 per cent EBITDA margin and 1.5 per cent PAT margin. Our focus from hereon is on growing business. These profit numbers have been achieved due to operating leverage and as we scale up, we expect to continue being profitable. Of course, every quarter we may not post 5 per cent profit margin, some quarters it may rise or fall, depending on business movement.
What is the guidance on gross merchandise value (GMV) growth?
We are a large player from a consumer payments perspective. Consumer payments has three categories — UPI, wallet and bill payments. We have been the market leader in wallet space for the last two years, with 18-20 per cent market share. At an industry level, wallet market has also grown 44 per cent from December 2024 to December 2025, according to the RBI’s statistics. In bill payments, we are ranked seventh, as on December; in terms of consumers using our app to pay bills, we were number sixth in November. So, we intend to break into top five in this space 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 rank has improved to from the 16th to the 12th spot in terms of consumer transactions on our app using UPI. We intend to break into the top 10 UPI apps. We are focusing on UPI growth as we are able to cross sell to users, whether it be wallet, bill payments or financial services. Overall, payments GMV has been growing for 12 quarters in a row and we intend to keep hitting new peak each quarter.
Should MDR be charged on person-to-merchant transactions on larger merchants?
It is extremely important. I know that UPI is looked as a service for public good, which is great, but there has to be some place at which money can be made. For example, we literally have thousands of merchants — online and offline — whose monthly throughput is more than ₹1 crore. If your monthly sales is more than ₹1 crore and you are paying a fee on all other transactions like credit card, debit card, and net banking, then why should you not pay for UPI?
Because debit card fee is also coming from the same savings account. Large merchants can afford to pay for UPI transactions and they should be paying. Five to 10 years ago, UPI transactions’ share in their daily overall transactions was much lower. So, they were paying for payment processing for other transactions.
Currently, large merchants are paying zero. Payment companies like us and banks are paying for it. There is a cost to maintaining that service. Cloud cost itself is high. Additional cost of product and tech development for managing the scale of payments is also extremely high. So, running these transaction services for zero is not sustainable. You can consider imposing MDR on merchants with monthly revenue of above ₹40 lakh to even ₹1 crore. Or for transaction value of ₹2,000 or ₹5,000 or more. You can still keep lower value transactions for free.
Your guidance on disbursement growth?
We don’t have a specific guidance on growth rate, but you may look at the growth numbers over the last few quarters. In Q3FY25, we had done ₹400 crore of personal loan and ₹250-₹300 crore of buy now pay later loans (BNPL). Now, BNPL as a product has been shut down by lenders and fintech players. So in Q3FY26, BNPL does not exist but we have done ₹900 crore of personal loan disbursements. We should be able to grow in double digit on an annual basis. In terms of lenders, we have four large NBFCs and six other smaller lenders for extending personal loans and some smaller secured products.
