Gaming industry contributed 10% of revenue for several payment firms, impact on UPI volume and value minimal

Payment companies to feel the pinch

The central government’s proposed ban on all real-money gaming will be a setback to payment firms that facilitate half a billion transactions every month through their platforms.

According to multiple sources, the gaming industry contributed 10 per cent of the topline for multiple payment aggregators (PA), although some have a greater exposure than others. A PA allows businesses to accept multiple online payment methods through a single platform without setting up separate accounts with each bank or provider.

The larger PA firms such as Razorpay, Cashfree, PhonePe, Easebuzz and PayU are among the firms with a sizeable exposure to the online gaming industry. Most of the gaming companies or online merchants typically use multiple PA firms to route traffic to optimise efficiency and speed. Hence, most of these top PA firms is likely to see an impact on the topline.

According to two different sources, the gaming industry contributed to around 10 percent of these companies' annual revenue.

Razorpay declined to comment for the story and did not share any details on the impact it will have because of the government ban.

"Our engagement has been limited exclusively to marquee, skill-based gaming companies that meet our stringent compliance standards, representing only a small portion of our portfolio. For over two years, we have operated under robust policies and rigorous safeguards, working solely with a handful of credible, large-scale partners. Given this measured and controlled exposure, we do not anticipate any material impact on our overall business," a spokesperson for PayU said in an email response to Moneycontrol.

Moneycontrol is yet to hear from other companies, and the story will be updated as soon as we receive their replies.

The monthly transaction count for online real-money gaming is around 400 million on UPI platform, which as a whole processes more than 19 billion every month

Data available with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) show that the monthly transaction count through UPI reached 500 million in April because of the domestic league cricket series, IPL. NPCI runs the popular mobile payments platform, UPI or United Payments Interface.

More than 90 percent of the real-money wallet loading happens through UPI and was worth over Rs 10,000 crore every month, with the annual turnover in the range of Rs 1.2 lakh crore, according to NPCI data.

The payment companies may have made a cumulative revenue of Rs 1,500 crore during the last financial year, a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows.

UPI processes more than 19 billion transactions a month, worth over Rs 24 lakh crore.

For UPI as a payment platform, the impact is thus minimal as the real money gaming sector contributes to around 0.5% in value every month and around 1.5% in volume on average. In April 2025, it did hit 2.5 percent in volume because of the IPL-related gaming activities. IPL is the peak season for the gaming industry in the country.

A lot of real money gaming transactions are small in ticket size. Thus UPI platforms will see a small, but sudden drop as soon as the ban takes effect.

Clarity for Payment Companies

Payment company executives said that the definitional clarity about legitimate and illegitimate gaming will remove ambiguities and help in the enforcement of rules

“For payment companies, this will provide a framework of who can legitimately avail the services and will benefit payment companies who have so far stayed away from participating in that sector,” said a founder of a large payment aggregator firm that has lower exposure to gaming companies.

It is likely that many of the current gaming companies will exit, creating a reasonable revenue/margin impact on fintechs and PAs partnering with them.

However, several payment firm executives said that this will push a lot of users to international betting sites, and customers can load money through credit cards on international websites.

“During Covid, multiple international platforms like Betway and Bet365 did huge business from India, and billions poured out of the country. A blanket ban will only route these betting transactions to platforms where the government cannot control or monitor the transactions,” said a senior banker on condition of anonymity.

Technically, card networks such as Visa and Mastercard can block Indian customers' credit card payments on such sites. But such websites skirt recognition by constantly changing the gateway or masking their real identity to go undetected. They also use a different merchant category code other than gaming or betting to go under the radar.