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Amazon and Meta are set to lobby India’s payments regulator over the PhonePe–Google Pay duopoly: A group of smaller UPI players will be meeting with the NPCI on Thursday, arguing for a reduction in user acquisition and fair access to features, as two firms have control of 80% of the transaction volume.
Amazon, along with Meta, is included among the major firms that are expected to lobby India’s payments body to challenge its dominance by Walmart-owned PhonePe, along with Google Pay, in the country’s rapidly growing instant payment network.
Executives from platforms like Amazon Pay, WhatsApp, CRED, MobiKwik, and Flipkart’s Supermoney are scheduled to meet with their representatives from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday. The body is responsible for its own Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the country’s instant payment system that handles millions of transactions every month.
The duopoly of Amazon and Meta issue
PhonePe, along with Google Pay, accounted for around 80% of the 22.6 billion transactions that took place on the UPI network in March 2026, as per NPCI data, far ahead of rivals like Paytm, CRED, and Amazon Pay, as well as MobiKwik. PhonePe has announced this week that it has surpassed 700 million active users as well as 50 million merchants that span more than 98 percent of India’s postcodes, which smaller competitors claim is almost impossible to duplicate.
What is the reason this meeting is taking place right now?
The conference comes one year since India put off plans to cap their market shares of UPI apps to 30% by December 31st 2026. This delay has allowed PhonePe, along with Google Pay, to retain and increase their dominance and has raised concerns for smaller players about their capability to challenge.
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What’s the latest news
The agenda that TechCrunch reviewed suggests that the participants are likely to raise concerns in three areas: limitations regarding how dominant apps can be to users and make use of contact data as well as equitable access to features like autopay, payment mandates, and other features, as well as incentives and support to enable emerging players to be more competitive.
The dilemma of the regulator
NPCI is a private company that operates under the RBI’s oversight. It has been unable to come up with ways to reduce dominance without disrupting services that are used by millions of customers. It is unclear if the meeting on Thursday will bring about any changes immediately or if it signals the beginning of a long-term discussion on regulatory issues.
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NPCI, Amazon, Meta, and other companies have not responded to requests for comments.
