Amazon and Meta are among the big companies that will be lobbying Indian payments institutions over the dominance of Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay in India’s fast-growing instant payments network.
TechCrunch said 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. The agency operates Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s instant payments system that processes billions of transactions every month.
The meeting comes more than a year after India postponed plans to limit the market share of UPI apps to 30% by December 31, 2026. This is a move to limit the share of a single app in UPI transactions. The delay has effectively allowed PhonePe and Google Pay to maintain their dominant positions, adding to concerns about their ability to compete among players with lower share.
According to data from NPCI, PhonePe and Google Pay together accounted for about 80% of the 22.6 billion transactions that took place on the UPI network in March. Its scale far surpasses competitors 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, underscoring the scale that has helped it cement its presence. Merchants that accept it span more than 98% of zip codes across the country, highlighting a reach that smaller competitors say will be difficult to replicate.
Participants including Amazon and Meta are expected to raise concerns about user acquisition practices, product design and monetization within the UPI ecosystem, according to the agenda reviewed by TechCrunch. Among the proposals include limiting how major apps register users and use contact data, requiring fair access to features such as automatic payments and payment obligations, and requesting incentives and regulatory support to help emerging players compete.
These companies are finding it harder to compete with the dominant instant payments players, so they are lobbying regulators to help. But NPCI, which operates under the supervision of the Reserve Bank of India, has struggled to find ways to curb its dominance without disrupting services used by hundreds of millions of users.
Tech Crunch Event
San Francisco, California
|
October 13-15, 2026
NPCI, Amazon, Meta and others did not respond to requests for comment.
It’s unclear whether the meeting will lead to immediate change as questions persist about how NPCI can address market concentration.
If you purchase through links in our articles, we may receive a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
