NPCI Lifts User Onboarding Cap for WhatsApp Pay

1 Jan 2025 , 08:44 AM

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has removed the user onboarding cap on WhatsApp Pay, enabling the platform to offer UPI services to all its users in India. This is a major step forward that allows WhatsApp Pay to reach the entire population across the country.

Initially, when WhatsApp Pay was launched, NPCI put a cap on the number of users who could sign up. This was done to ensure that the platform could handle payments securely and efficiently, while also monitoring how well the system performed with a smaller group.

The cap was gradually increased over time. For example, in November 2022, NPCI increased the limit to 100 million users. This way, WhatsApp Pay could refine its system and operations before expanding any further.

Now that the cap is completely removed, WhatsApp Pay can expand its UPI services to all of its 500 million users in India. This will be a great opportunity for the platform to make its payment services more widely accessible and useful to users.

WhatsApp Pay will aim to do much more than money transfers. It will include features like bill payments, ticket bookings, and shopping for one-stop management of everyday transactions easily and securely.

The company has committed itself to improving digital payments and contributing to India’s financial inclusion by making payments on WhatsApp simple, reliable, and secure.

NPCI extended the deadline and gave an extra lifeline to the UPI apps breaching the cap and permitted until December 31, 2026, after removing the existing limit to observe that no particular app shall take over 30% of market share.