NPCI extends UPI market cap deadline by 2 yrs to December '24

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Friday announced that deadline for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) players to limit to a market cap of 30 per cent by two years to December 31, 2024.

In November 2022, the NPCI had proposed a 30 per cent volume cap for third-party app providers (TPAP). Currently, there’s no cap on volume and Google Pay and PhonePe hold the market share of about 80 per cent.

"Taking into account the present usage and future potential of UPI, and other relevant factors, the timelines for compliance of existing TPAPs who are exceeding the volume cap, is extended by two (2) years i.e. till December 31, 2024 to comply with the volume cap," said NPCI in its circular.

The deadline given by NPCI was of December 31, 2022 after which all players would have to have a share of 30 percent or less in monthly UPI volumes.

NPCI in 2020 came up with a directive to cap the share of transactions a third-party application provider (TPAP) could process at 30 per cent of the volume of transactions handled on UPI, effective January 1, 2021, which is to be calculated on the basis of the volume of transactions processed during the preceding three months.

However, existing TPAPs such as PhonePe and Google Pay were given two years more to comply with the orders.

Earlier this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) came out with a consultation paper on charges in payment systems, which made a case for a tiered charge to be imposed on UPI transactions in line with Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) transactions. The Central government also said that UPI is convenient and that there were no plans to put any charges on it.