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WhatsApp: Now any user can make UPI payment through WhatsApp. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has lifted the user onboarding cap for WhatsApp Pay, allowing WhatsApp to offer UPI services across its entire user base in India. It is being said that this change in rules will prove to be an important step for WhatsApp before the arrival of the New Year. This will further promote digital payments, as crores of users in the country use WhatsApp.

NPCI said in a statement on December 31 that their move allows WhatsApp Pay to expand its UPI services to its entire user base in India. Earlier, NPCI had allowed WhatsApp Pay to expand its UPI user base in a phased manner. In fact, NPCI, which regulates the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) framework in India, had initially imposed user onboarding limits on payment services like WhatsApp Pay to monitor scalability, performance and security concerns.

50 crore users of WhatsApp

When WhatsApp Pay was launched, it was limited to include a certain percentage of UPI users. This was intended to reduce the risks associated with connecting large numbers of users simultaneously and allow WhatsApp to improve its performance. Gradually, NPCI increased the limit in phases. In November 2022, the limit of WhatsApp Pay was increased to 100 million (10 crore) users. But now the onboarding limit has been completely removed. In such a situation, WhatsApp has more than 500 million (50 crore) users in India, which is its biggest strength.

Extension till 31 December 2026

Taking into consideration a number of factors, the deadline for compliance with the existing TPAP volume cap has been extended by two years, i.e. till December 31, 2026, the RBI said in a circular on December 31. Further, NPCI has allowed the 30 per cent volume cap for TPAP to be retained till December 2026.

Adherence to 30 percent volume cap

Volume cap limits the amount of transactions that any third-party application can process on the UPI platform. The extension will give TPAP more time to scale up its services and process higher transaction volumes, while continuing to adhere to the 30 percent limit of overall UPI transaction volume. According to NPCI rules issued in early 2021, no single UPI app should have more than 30 percent share in the UPI payments market.