Amazon and Meta to Lobby India’s Payments Regulator Over UPI Dominance
Amazon, Meta and rival firms will press India’s payments authority over UPI dominance by PhonePe and Google Pay, seeking rules on onboarding, data use and fair access.
India’s fast-growing instant payments system is set to be the focus of a high-level meeting this week as Amazon Pay, Meta’s WhatsApp, CRED, MobiKwik and Flipkart’s Super.money join others to press the National Payments Corporation of India over UPI dominance by PhonePe and Google Pay. The participants plan to raise concerns about user acquisition, product design and monetization within the Unified Payments Interface, arguing that the market concentration is restricting competition. The meeting underscores growing tension in the payments ecosystem as smaller players seek regulatory intervention to secure fair access to features and customers.
Companies to meet NPCI this week
Industry representatives from major platforms are scheduled to meet the National Payments Corporation of India on Thursday to present a unified set of concerns about UPI dominance by a small number of apps. The NPCI operates the UPI rails that process billions of transactions monthly, and the session will cover onboarding practices, access to key features such as autopay and payment mandates, and restrictions on use of contact data. Participants intend to push for specific operational limits on dominant players and for incentives to help emerging services scale.
Data points that highlight concentration
Official statistics show steep concentration at the top of the UPI ecosystem, with two apps accounting for the lion’s share of transactions on the network. PhonePe and Google Pay together handled roughly four out of every five of the 22.6 billion UPI transactions reported in March, a scale that challengers say makes it difficult to compete on equal footing. These figures, opponents argue, demonstrate why targeted regulatory measures are necessary to preserve contestability and consumer choice.
Proposals aimed at onboarding and data use
The agenda reviewed by industry participants includes proposals to curb aggressive user acquisition tactics and to limit how dominant apps leverage contact lists and other personal data. Companies are also asking for equitable access to features such as autopay, recurring mandates and merchant-facing tools that can affect revenue and user retention. Advocates for the measures say operational rules would level the playing field without dismantling services relied upon by millions of consumers.
PhonePe’s reach and market entrenchment
PhonePe has highlighted its own scale as evidence of widespread adoption, reporting more than 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants across India. Company statements emphasize merchant coverage spanning over 98% of postal codes, underlining the depth of its acceptance footprint and the logistical advantages that creates. Rivals contend that such entrenched reach, once established, is costly and slow for newcomers to replicate without regulatory support.
Regulatory delay and the 30% cap debate
The debate follows a government decision to defer a planned cap on market share for individual UPI apps — a rule that would have limited any app to 30% of total transactions — until December 31, 2026. That delay effectively preserved the status quo and intensified calls from smaller players for alternative interventions. Regulators have publicly acknowledged the difficulty of designing measures that curb dominance without disrupting services used by hundreds of millions of consumers.
NPCI’s balancing act under RBI supervision
The NPCI operates under the supervision of the Reserve Bank of India and faces the twin challenges of maintaining system stability while addressing competition concerns. Officials have warned that heavy-handed steps could fragment the network or degrade user experience, complicating any effort to penalize market leaders. At the same time, industry voices pressing for change emphasize that inaction risks entrenching a duopoly that stifles innovation and raises long-term systemic risks.
It is not yet clear whether the meeting will produce immediate policy shifts, and several parties, including NPCI and the platforms involved, declined to comment ahead of the discussions. Market participants will watch for whether the regulator proposes narrowly tailored operational rules, incentives for smaller providers, or further study and public consultation before taking action.
The outcome of this engagement could shape the competitive dynamics of India’s digital payments market for years, influencing merchant economics, consumer choice and how new services enter the space. Stakeholders on all sides say they prefer a stable UPI system, but they diverge on whether preserving that stability requires new constraints on the market’s largest participants.
