Amazon and Meta lobby India payments regulator over Google Pay and PhonePe dominance

Amazon and Meta are among several companies preparing to lobby India’s National Payments Corporation of India over the dominance of Walmart-backed PhonePe and Google Pay in the country’s instant payments network. Executives representing Amazon Pay, WhatsApp, CRED, MobiKwik, and Flipkart’s Super.money are scheduled to meet the NPCI on Thursday, according to TechCrunch. The body oversees the Unified Payments Interface, which processed 22.6 billion transactions in March. PhonePe and Google Pay combined accounted for roughly 80 percent of those transactions, data from NPCI shows. PhonePe said this week it has surpassed 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants, covering more than 98 percent of India’s postal codes. An agenda reviewed by TechCrunch indicates that participants plan to raise concerns about user acquisition practices, product design, and monetization within the UPI ecosystem. Proposals include 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. India deferred plans to cap any single UPI app’s market share at 30 percent until December 31, 2026, a delay that has allowed PhonePe and Google Pay to retain their lead. It remains unclear whether Thursday’s meeting will lead to immediate changes, with questions persisting over how the NPCI could address concentration without disrupting services used by hundreds of millions of people. The NPCI operates under the Reserve Bank of India’s supervision.