Mumbai, Dec. 19 -- A plan by the National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) to restrict an app to a little over a third of the overall transactions on fast payments platform UPI by the end of 2026 is a tough ask, regulators and financial sector experts said.

The idea first came to the fore in 2020 when the retail payments umbrella body, NPCI, announced it would impose a 30% cap on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volumes. The plan was to counter concentration risk, given that the top two apps-PhonePe and Google Pay-already accounted for nearly eight of 10 transactions.

The deadline to implement the UPI volume cap has been postponed twice since, the latest being from January to December 2026.

NPCI data showed that 82% of UPI transactions w...