The government’s ban on online real money gaming had an immediate effect on the Unified Payments Interface transactions in August, with the gaming sector seeing a Rs 2,500 crore drop in a matter of nine days, according to data available with the National Payments Corporation of India, which runs UPI.
During August, the gaming category saw 271 million transactions worth Rs 7,441 crore, a 25 percent drop compared to the 351 million transactions worth over Rs 10,076 crore that the UPI platform had reported in July.
The RMG ban was effective for around nine days of the month, indicating that most of the gaming sector’s revenue came from RMG and other digital games, such as e-sports and online social games hardly generated any revenue for the sector.
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 gaming category saw around 350-400 million monthly transactions on the UPI platform, which, as a whole, processes more than 19 billion every month, worth around Rs 25 lakh crore.
Data available with NPCI show that the monthly transaction count through UPI reached 500 million in April because of the domestic league cricket series, IPL.
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, around Rs 20.
Most of the gaming firms immediately stopped all the real money games and have moved to e-sports and social gaming. Several firms have also laid off many of their employees over the last few days. Most of the RMG firms were profitable, a rarity in the Indian startup ecosystem.
The rapid action
The swift passage of the bill reflects the government’s growing urgency to rein in an industry estimated to be worth over Rs 23,000 crore in annual revenues for RMG firms, with 450 million Indians engaging in some form of online gaming.
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.
However, there are concerns that the move may push a lot of users to international betting sites, where customers can load money through credit cards, making it harder for the government to monitor and regulate such transactions.
Many international gambling, betting, and RMG 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.
But, given the penal provisions, most payment companies and banks are likely to strictly control and monitor such international transactions.
The law grants the central government sweeping powers to ban online real-money games, while prescribing penal action against operators, advertisers, and even financial intermediaries who enable such platforms.
Offences have been classified as cognisable and non-bailable, carrying jail terms of up to three years and fines of up to Rs 1 crore.
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