Amazon, Meta join the battle to end Google Pay, PhonePe dominance in India

Amazon and Meta are among the big companies expected to woo India’s payments giant over the reigns of Walmart’s PhonePe and Google Pay in the country’s fastest-growing instant payment network.

Leaders representing platforms including Amazon Pay, WhatsApp, CRED, MobiKwik, and Flipkart’s Super.money are planning to meet with the National Payments Corporation of India on Thursday, TechCrunch has learned. The organization uses India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) instant payment system that handles billions of transactions every month.

The meeting comes after a year from India delayed plans to destroy market share of UPI apps at 30% till December 31, 2026, a measure that would have reduced every single app’s share of UPI transactions. This delay has allowed PhonePe and Google Pay to maintain their dominant positions, raising concerns among smaller players about their competitiveness.

PhonePe and Google Pay combined accounted for nearly 80% of the 22.6 billion transactions on the UPI network in March, according to NPCI. demonstrations. This surpasses competitors like Paytm, Flipkart’s Super.money, CRED, Amazon Pay, and MobiKwik.

PhonePe said this week it crossed 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants across India, confirming the growth that has helped its sustainability. Merchants who accept it cover 98% of the country’s postcodes, demonstrating a reach that smaller critics say is difficult to replicate.

A report reviewed by TechCrunch indicates that the participants, including Amazon and Meta, are expected to raise concerns about usage patterns, product design, and monetization within the UPI ecosystem. Among the goals are restrictions on how apps use user-intensive and contact information, require access to features such as automatic payments and payments, and request incentives and regulatory support to keep emerging players competitive.

Because these companies are finding it difficult to compete with instant payment players, they are appealing to the regulatory body to help them. However, the NPCI, which operates under the supervision of the Reserve Bank of India, has said he struggled to find ways to reduce power without disrupting services used by hundreds of millions of users.

NPCI, Amazon, Meta, and others did not respond to a request for comment.

It remains unclear whether the meeting will lead to any changes, with questions still lingering about how the NPCI will deal with market taxes.