NPCI considers market share cap on digital payment platforms; Flipkart expands services in tier-II cities

The National Payments Corporation of India is considering placing a limit on the market share of digital payments companies on the UPI platform. Ecommerce giant Flipkart has expanded its reach in tier-II and tier-III cities. 

NPCI may place market share cap on digital payment platforms

The National Payments Corporation of India is planning to impose a cap on the market share of digital payment companies on the inter-bank payments network unified payments interface (UPI).

The issue was discussed last week in a meeting of the UPI steering committee, The Economic Times reported.

The concentration of transactions being processed on digital payment platforms Google Pay and the One97 Communications-run Paytm is considered to be detrimental to the country’s payments sector, the report said.

A banker told the publication that those present in the meeting discussed a proposal to limit each digital payment company’s market share to not more than 33% of all UPI transactions to prevent any company from securing a monopoly. 

Flipkart expands its reach in tier-II and tier-III cities

Bengaluru-based ecommerce giant Flipkart has expanded its pick-up services to over 800 cities and towns in the last six months. 

The expansion is part of The Reach Project, a project launched in February to scale pick-up capabilities, an official statement said.

More than 60,000 sellers across India will benefit from the expansion of Flipkart’s operations in remote areas, the statement added. 

As part of its efforts to reach a larger customer base, Flipkart rolled out a Hindi interface on its platform. 

LazyPay extends services to media subscription services

Digital payments platform LazyPay has announced its partnership with music streaming platform Gaana.com and over-the-top (OTT) content platforms Sony Liv and ALT Balaji.

LazyPay, owned by Dutch financial services company PayU, will offer its pay later facility to the subscribers of the content platforms. 

The offer allows users to initiate payments and by-pass OTP (one-time-password) requests and filling in payment credentials. 

Users can make payments on the LazyPay app within 15 days of utilising the pay later feature. 

Last month, LazyPay said it will allow users to access credit scores across offline merchants and ecommerce platforms.