The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has decided to put a 30 per cent volume cap for third-party applications offering UPI.

“With UPI reaching 200 crore transactions a month and with potential for future growth, it has issued a cap of 30 per cent of total volume of transactions processed in UPI, applicable on all Third Party App Providers (TPAPs). This will be with effect from January 1, 2021,” NPCI said in a statement on Thursday.

This will help to address the risks and protect the UPI ecosystem as it further scales up, NPCI further said.

The move comes after UPI transactions crossed the 200-crore mark in October, amounting to 207.16 crore payments worth ₹3.86-lakh crore.

“The existing TPAPs exceeding the specified cap will have a period of two years from January 2021 to comply with the same in a phased manner,” it said.

This could potentially impact companies like PhonePe and Google Pay, which are understood to be the market leaders for UPI, along with Paytm.

A recent report by S&P Global Market Intelligence had said that Google Pay and PhonePe-led UPI payment apps handled over 700 crore transactions in total, representing more than two-thirds of UPI transactions in 2019.

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