NPCI caps UPI transactions on third-party apps at 30%

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has capped the volume of transactions via Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on third-party apps at 30 per cent. In statement issued on Thursday, the retail payments body said this decision is meant to protect the payments channel from risks as it grows in scale.

"National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said that with UPI reaching 2 billion transactions a month and with potential for future growth, it has issued a cap of 30 per cent of total volume of transactions processed in UPI, applicable on all Third Party App Providers (TPAPs). This will be with effect from January 1, 2021. It will help to address the risks and protect the UPI ecosystem as it further scales up," the statement read.

This limit of 30 per cent will be calculated on the basis of total volume of transactions processed in UPI during the preceding three months (on a rolling basis). The existing third-party UPI apps exceeding the specified cap, will have a period of two years from January 2021, to comply with this transaction volume cap in a phased manner, NPCI said.

NPCI has not clarified as to what will happen once a third-party app hits the mandated volume limit of 30 per cent. The move will take a toll on applications like Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and others. It might lead to rise in number of failed transactions, to the dismay of users.

Earlier, NPCI granted its approval to WhatsApp to go live on its UPI platform and expand its users in a phased manner. The messaging application has been allowed to register a user base of 20 million for now.