New Year, New Rules: NPCI Lifts WhatsApp Pay’s User Cap for Full UPI Integration

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The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has removed the limit on the number of users for WhatsApp Pay, enabling the widely used messaging app to integrate its entire user base of over 500 million with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

In a statement about this decision, the organization responsible for retail payments and settlement systems indicated that the previous cap of 100 million users on WhatsApp Pay has been eliminated. This change follows a gradual easing of restrictions on WhatsApp Pay since it was first introduced in 2020.

Originally, the service was restricted to one million users, which was later increased to 100 million in 2022, and now the limit has been entirely lifted.

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Check out the announcement released by NPCI.

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The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has lifted the limit on user onboarding for WhatsApp Pay, allowing it to offer UPI services to all its users in India immediately. Previously, NPCI had allowed WhatsApp Pay to grow its UPI user base gradually. With this latest update, the restrictions on onboarding users have been removed, although WhatsApp Pay must still adhere to all current UPI guidelines and regulations for third-party app providers (TPAPs).

WhatsApp Pay has faced challenges in gaining a foothold in the competitive UPI market, processing 51 million transactions in November, while Google Pay and PhonePe together handled around 12 billion transactions. In November 2023, WhatsApp Pay managed about 22 million transactions. Additionally, NPCI has postponed the implementation of market share caps for popular digital payment methods by two years, which will benefit Google Pay and PhonePe. Originally set to start at the end of 2024, the cap will now be enforced by December 2026. This cap, proposed in November 2020, states that no digital payment firm can hold more than 30% of the total transaction volume processed through UPI.