Amazon, Meta Lead Lobbying Push Against PhonePe-Google Pay Dominance in India UPI
Major tech firms to meet India's payments regulator seeking fair competition as Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google control 80% of UPI transactions
Quick Look
- Amazon, Meta, CRED, MobiKwik, and Flipkart's Super.money are set to lobby India's National Payments Corporation of India over PhonePe and Google Pay's dominance in the UPI instant payments network.
- The two apps control roughly 80% of 22.6 billion monthly transactions, prompting concerns about fair competition.
- The meeting follows India's deferment of a 30% market share cap until December 2026.
AI-generated summary
Amazon and Meta are among the big companies set to lobby India's payments body over the dominance of Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay in the country's fast-growing instant payments network. Executives representing platforms including Amazon Pay, WhatsApp, CRED, MobiKwik, and Flipkart's Super.money are scheduled to meet the National Payments Corporation of India on Thursday, TechCrunch has learned. The body operates the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India's instant payments system that processes billions of transactions each month.
The meeting comes over a year after India deferred plans to cap the market share of UPI apps at 30% until December 31, 2026, a measure that would have limited any single app's share of UPI transactions. That delay has effectively allowed PhonePe and Google Pay to retain their dominant positions, intensifying concerns among players with smaller shares about their ability to compete.
PhonePe and Google Pay combined accounted for roughly 80% of the 22.6 billion transactions on the UPI network in March, data from NPCI shows. That scale far outpaces rivals such as Paytm, Flipkart's Super.money, CRED, Amazon Pay, and MobiKwik.
PhonePe said this week it has crossed 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants across India, underlining the scale that has helped entrench its position. The merchants that accept it spans more than 98% of the country's postal codes, highlighting the reach that smaller rivals say is difficult to replicate.
An agenda reviewed by TechCrunch shows participants, including Amazon and Meta, are expected to raise concerns about user acquisition practices, product design, and monetization within the UPI ecosystem. Among the proposals are restrictions on how dominant apps onboard users and use contact data, calls for fair access to features such as autopay and payment mandates, and requests for incentives and regulatory support to help emerging players compete.
Because these companies find it harder to compete with the dominant instant pay players, they are lobbying the regulatory body to help them. However, the NPCI, which operates under the Reserve Bank of India's supervision, has struggled to find ways to curb dominance without disrupting services used by hundreds of millions of users.
NPCI, Amazon, Meta, and others did not respond to requests for comment. It remains unclear whether the meeting will lead to any immediate changes, with questions persisting over how NPCI could address market concentration.
