NPCI extends market cap deadline for UPI apps for another 2 years till 2026

New Delhi: In a relief to major players like PhonePe and Google Pay, NPCI has extended the deadline for implementing a 30 percent volume cap on third-party Unified Payments Interface (UPI) apps by another two years till December 31, 2026.

This is the third time that the NPCI has extended the deadline.

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"Considering various factors, the timeline for compliance of existing third party application providers (TPAPs) who are exceeding the volume cap, is extended two years ie till December 2026," NPCI said in a circular issued on Tuesday.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had initially proposed a 30 percent cap on the volume of transactions that UPI apps can process back in November 2020, and had given time to the existing players to adhere to the volume cap in two years.

Currently, major TPAPs like Google Pay and PhonePe hold an 80 percent share in UPI transactions.

NPCI runs the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) used for real-time payments between peers or at merchants' end while making purchases.

The cap of 30 percent will be calculated on the basis of the total volume of transactions processed in UPI during the preceding three months on a rolling basis, as per NPCI.

To achieve 30 percent market share, the option would be to stop on-boarding of new customers for those who have higher than 30 percent market shares in UPI transactions.

Meanwhile, NPCI has lifted the limit from onboarding UPI users for the third-party app provider WhatsApp Pay with immediate effect.

With this development, WhatsApp Pay can now extend UPI services to its entire user base in India. Previously, NPCI had permitted WhatsApp Pay to expand its UPI user base in a phased manner.

There was a cap of 100 million users which has been lifted by NPCI.

NPCI, an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks' Association, is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India (IBA).

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