Pop bets on rewards to stand out in India’s crowded UPI race

MUMBAI: When every payment app looks the same, the real transaction shifts to attention. With UPI payments becoming virtually identical across platforms, Razorpay-backed Pop is betting that rewards not payments will persuade users to tap its app first.

The fintech platform has unveiled its first brand campaign, built around a simple proposition: users should receive a reward every time they make a payment.

The campaign film, titled In a Perfect World, strings together a series of impossible fantasies carbohydrates that make people thinner, pandas that live forever, and a tongue-in-cheek reference to influencer Ranveer Allahbadia “finally learning some manners” before revealing that one seemingly unrealistic idea already exists: earning rewards on every payment through Pop.

The campaign arrives at a time when India’s UPI ecosystem has become increasingly uniform. Whether consumers use Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm or Pop, the payment experience is largely the same, leaving platforms with few opportunities to differentiate their offerings.

That has made rewards one of the industry’s most valuable competitive tools. Payment apps are increasingly using cashback, loyalty points and incentives to encourage habitual usage, particularly among younger consumers who switch easily between platforms.

For Pop, the strategy extends beyond simply offering discounts. Rather than focusing solely on cashback, the company is encouraging users to earn Pop Coins through everyday payments and redeem them across partner brands within its ecosystem, creating a rewards loop designed to keep users engaged.

The approach, however, enters an increasingly crowded market. CRED built its business around rewarding credit-card bill payments, while Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm popularised scratch cards, cashback and reward coins. More recently, Flipkart-backed super.money has positioned itself with guaranteed cashback deposited directly into users’ bank accounts, steering away from gamified rewards.

The economics behind these incentives remain challenging. Since UPI transactions generate no direct revenue for payment apps, reward programmes require continuous funding, making long-term sustainability difficult. Pop itself had previously scaled back its cashback offerings, highlighting the financial pressures involved.

Its latest campaign reflects a broader strategic shift from rewarding individual transactions to building long-term engagement. As India’s digital payments market matures, the biggest battle is no longer over processing payments, but over becoming the app consumers instinctively reach for every day. Whether rewards can create that habit remains the industry’s next big test.