Published 06:59 IST, November 6th 2020
NPCI gives approval for WhatsApp to ‘Go Live’ on UPI in a graded manner
WhatsApp can expand its UPI base in a graded manner starting with a maximum number of registered users at 20 million, the NPCI said in a statement.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday, November, 5 gave its approval for WhatsApp to ‘Go Live’ on Unified Payment Interface (UPI) in the multi-bank model. WhatsApp can expand its UPI user base in a graded manner starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million in UPI, NPCI said in its statement.
The decision came as a relief to WhatsApp that began its pilot run two years ago and waited for regulatory clearances to launch its UPI-based payments in India for its 400 million users.
Earlier in the year, the NPCI had notified the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that WhatsApp had met data localisation requirements. NPCI in a related development has also capped the share of the total number of transaction that a third party application can process at 30 percent of the total volume of transactions processed in UPI, effective from January 1, 2021.
NPCI said that with UPI reaching 2 billion transactions a month and with potential for future growth, it has issued a cap of 30 percent of the total volume of transactions processed in UPI, which is applicable on all Third-Party App Providers (TPAPs).
The 30 percent cap will be determined on the basis of the total volume of transactions processed in UPI during the preceding three months (on a rolling basis), NPCI said. While adding that those existing TPAPs who have surpassed the cap will have a period of two years from January 2021, to comply with the same in a phased manner.
The third-party applications such as Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, and Amazon Pay are currently dominating the UPI ecosystem that controls the majority of the transactions. The biggest player is Google Pay with over a 40 percent market share, closely followed by PhonePe, according to industry estimates.
Furthermore, UPI recorded over 2 billion transactions in October, which is a milestone that highlights speedier adoption of digital payments in a post-COVID-19 world. UPI was launched in 2016 and it had crossed 1 billion transactions for the first time in October 2019. While it took UPI three years to reach a billion transactions in a month, the next billion came in just a year.
About NPCI
In 2008, NPCI was incorporated as an umbrella organization for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India. It was also created for a robust payment and settlement infrastructure in the country. It focuses on bringing innovations in the retail payment systems through the use of technology and is relentlessly working to transform India into a digital economy.
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Updated 06:59 IST, November 6th 2020