The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) is set to ban all gaming UPI transactions under ₹50. According to a publication, these new rules are set to be announced soon.
The change is aimed at ‘moderating’ UPI volume that has surged since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been causing an increase in bank outages.
Several industry insiders confirmed that NPCI in the recent week saw a massive spike in low-ticket recurring transactions as low as ₹1 processed by gaming merchants.
An internal message accessed by a well-known publication reveals that NPCI is not amused by the people using the United Payments Interface (UPI) to play fantasy cricket during the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 championship.
“This is to inform you all that (National Payments Corporation of India) NPCI will block all UPI transactions of INR 50 and less for all gaming merchants. The timeline for the same is unknown yet but from some resources, we have heard that it might be done in the next 24 hrs. We request you to be prepared with this and let us know if Paytm can help you in any way,” read the message accessed by the publication.
More than ₹5 lakh crore payments have been processed by UPI in March 2021. However, during IPL season the volumes of transaction increase especially on fantasy sports application and that too with a very low-ticket transaction.
This means that gaming users transact as low as ₹1 to ₹10, hitting the UPI network and causing delay in UPI transactions.
Industry sources have confirmed that NPCI has seen an ‘unusual’ growth in the number of transactions people are making on IPL.
Surjitt Sahani
