Regulatory paradox: Why capping UPI transactions might hurt the ecosystem
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: A plan by the National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) to restrict an app to a little over a third of the overall transactions on fast payments platform UPI by the end of 2026 is a tough ask, regulators and financial sector experts said.
The idea first came to the fore in 2020 when the retail payments umbrella body, NPCI, announced it would impose a 30% cap on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volumes. The plan was to counter concentration risk, given that the top two apps—PhonePe and Google Pay—already accounted for nearly eight of 10 transactions. The deadline to implement the UPI volume cap has been postponed twice since, the latest being from January to December 2026.
NPCI data showed that 82% of UPI transactions were processed through PhonePe and Google Pay in October, compared to 86% in the same period last year. According to industry insiders, the 400 basis point (bps) gain in market share by other UPI apps shows that others are catching up, but at an extremely slow pace. Experts said that at the heart of the issue is the fact that payments by themselves generate no revenue, as there is no merchant discount rate (MDR) on UPI payments since January 2020.
MDR is the charge paid by the merchant to the bank, card network, and point-of-sale provider for offline transactions, and to the payment gateways for online purchases. “If you impose a cap on market share, even companies that are investing in UPI will stop putting in more money," said a senior payments industry executive. “The problem now is that UPI players are not investing because they are not making any money, and the only way to kickstart the cycle is to bring back MDR, at least for the larger merchants." After
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