UPI market share cap in limbo

Bengaluru: With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) blocking WhatsApp’s payments business launch over non-compliance with the data law, the proposal to limit market shares up to 33% for each player on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is being put on the back burner, two people aware of the matter said.
Before the Israeli spyware ‘Pegasus’ controversy, in August, a proposal to cap the maximum market share for each app on UPI was discussed in the steering committee meeting of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). This triggered a debate on the dominance of players like Google Pay and the much anticipated arrival of WhatsApp on the network.
The issue might only be picked up later next year as WhatsApp’s payments ambitions have virtually been thwarted. While Google Pay continues to lead the transaction volumes on UPI, industry players were apprehensive of WhatsApp’s entry on the network, especially since it has 400 million monthly active users.
TOI reported in its November 8 edition that the central bank had told the Supreme Court that the Facebook-owned WhatsApp is still non-compliant with data-localisation norms and that it would not be allowed to launch full-scale payments here, before the company is fully compliant.