Highlights
- Amazon Pay, WhatsApp, CRED and others set to meet NPCI over competition concerns.
- PhonePe and Google Pay processed 80 per cent of 22.6 billion UPI transactions in March.
- Proposed 30 per cent market share cap on UPI apps delayed until December 2026.
The meeting comes after India delayed a plan that would have capped any single UPI app's market share at 30 per cent, with the new deadline pushed to 31 December 2026.
That decision has given PhonePe and Google Pay more time to cement their positions, making it increasingly difficult for smaller players to gain ground.
The smaller companies say the current situation makes fair competition nearly impossible.
The numbers tell
PhonePe and Google Pay together handled around 80 per cent of the 22.6 billion transactions recorded on the UPI network in March, according to NPCI data.
PhonePe this week said it has crossed 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants, covering more than 98 per cent of India's postal codes. Rivals say that level of reach is extremely hard to match without regulatory support.
According to an agenda reviewed by TechCrunch, those attending the NPCI meeting plan to raise concerns about how dominant apps sign up new users, use contact data, and access key features such as autopay and payment mandates.
They are also expected to call for incentives and regulatory backing to help smaller players grow within the UPI ecosystem.
The NPCI, which operates under the Reserve Bank of India, has so far found it difficult to tackle the market imbalance without disrupting a system used by hundreds of millions of people daily.
Whether Thursday's meeting leads to any concrete action remains to be seen.
