According to reports, the operator of digital payments infrastructure, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has extended the deadline for existing third-party apps to comply with its market share guidelines on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network by two years.

NPCI says, “The new deadline would be December 31, 2024, from January 1, 2023, earlier. The mandate requires payment apps to hold no more than 30 percent market share in terms of payment volumes.”

The extension follows a formal request for postponement by UPI leader Walmart-backed PhonePe and discussions with Google Pay.

“Taking into account the present usage and future potential of UPI, and other relevant factors, the timelines for compliance of existing TPAPs (third-party apps) who are exceeding the volume cap, is extended by two years i.e. till December 31, 2024 to comply with the volume cap,” says NPCI.

NPCI says, “Significant potential of digital payments and the need for multi-fold penetration from its current state, it is imperative that other existing and new players (banks and non-banks) shall scale-up their consumer outreach for the growth of UPI and achieve overall market equilibrium.”

The extension brings relief to PhonePe and Google’s payment unit in India, which have a combined market share of over 80 percent on the UPI network.

Sameer Nigam, founder & chief executive, PhonePe says, At PhonePe's scale, to reduce our UPI market share to 30 percent we would be forced to deny UPI payment services to crores of Indians, and that would be totally detrimental to the incredible Indian digital payments growth story over recent years.”

“The new NPCI circular itself acknowledges that the burden is on other existing and new UPI players to ínvest more time, effort and money to increase their own UPI market share. Failing that, the organic market share of participants in the UPI industry will not change significantly, and NPCI will have to keep extending the market cap indefinitely,” Nigam adds.