UPI dominance – Amazon and Meta join UPI app makers urging India’s payments regulator to curb PhonePe and Google Pay dominance—raising issues around onboarding, data use, and fair access to features.
A new round of lobbying is set to test how India regulates its UPI instant payments ecosystem as PhonePe and Google Pay hold most transaction share.
Why Amazon and Meta are getting involved
Executives from major players—including Amazon Pay. WhatsApp (Meta). CRED. MobiKwik. and Flipkart’s Super.money—are scheduled to meet the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday.. The NPCI runs UPI. the infrastructure behind instant payments that now handles billions of transactions monthly. and its decisions shape the rules everyone in the ecosystem has to live with.
This is not just a corporate complaint about competition. It’s a push toward clearer guardrails for how dominant UPI apps grow, how they onboard users, and how they monetize—areas where smaller rivals argue they struggle to match scale.
The dominance question NPCI can’t ignore
India has already signaled its sensitivity to concentration risk.. Plans to cap UPI app market share at 30% were deferred until December 31, 2026.. That extension has had a practical effect: it helped PhonePe and Google Pay maintain momentum in a network where consumer behavior. merchant adoption. and marketing efficiency tend to compound over time.
NPCI data indicates that PhonePe and Google Pay together accounted for roughly 80% of the 22.6 billion UPI transactions in March.. Rivals such as Paytm. Super.money. CRED. Amazon Pay. and MobiKwik operate at a much smaller slice of the flow. which can make it harder to attract merchants and offer competitive merchant incentives.
The specific complaints: onboarding, data, and “fair access”
The agenda being reviewed centers on issues that are familiar in platform regulation debates: how user acquisition works. how product design influences behavior. and how monetization is structured.. Participants are expected to raise concerns about restrictions on dominant apps’ onboarding practices and the use of contact data.. They also want fair access to features—particularly items like autopay and payment mandates—so that new or smaller apps aren’t locked out of capabilities that can determine switching.
From a product standpoint, these aren’t abstract issues.. UPI apps are competing for the same moments in a user’s life—paying a bill. scanning a QR code. settling peer-to-peer payments.. When the biggest players control the most common pathways. smaller apps often face a higher burden to convince users they’re worth the switch.
Scale is the real moat, and it’s hard to copy
PhonePe. for example. has pointed to the depth of its reach: it recently said it has crossed 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants in India.. It also claims its merchant network spans more than 98% of postal codes.. Even when rivals offer similar payment experiences, merchant coverage and habit formation can be difficult to replicate quickly.
That mismatch—between infrastructure-like reach and competitors’ comparatively smaller distribution—sits at the center of the lobbying.. Smaller players say they’re not just outspending larger rivals; they’re also disadvantaged by the underlying network effects that come with user and merchant density.
What this means for Indian payments consumers
For users, the immediate impact may look subtle: apps may continue to offer similar payments, similar screens, and similar incentives. But regulatory outcomes can change the longer-term direction—what offers get promoted, what onboarding paths are allowed, and how quickly new services can scale.
In practice. fairer access could mean more room for experimentation around features and pricing—if NPCI can design rules that reduce advantages held by dominant apps without degrading the reliability of UPI.. If it can’t. the result could be a slower pace of competition. with consumers seeing fewer meaningful differences beyond branding and cashback.
The regulatory tightrope NPCI faces
NPCI operates under Reserve Bank of India supervision, and that adds complexity to the task.. Curbing dominance is one objective, but UPI also supports payment activity used by hundreds of millions of users.. Any change—whether about market caps. onboarding restrictions. or data-use limits—has to avoid unintended consequences like friction during payments or confusion across merchant systems.
The challenge for regulators is that UPI’s success depends on smooth interoperability and broad adoption.. Market-share interventions can be blunt instruments, especially in ecosystems where user and merchant adoption are cumulative.. Still. leaving concentration unaddressed may intensify concerns about the future shape of the market. particularly when dominant apps can bundle capabilities that raise switching costs.
For now, it’s unclear whether the Thursday meeting will translate into immediate changes. What is clear is that the debate is moving from boardroom competition to rulemaking—exactly where UPI’s next phase will be decided.