Merchant Underwriting must become a continuous risk function in India’s real-time payments economy
By Deepak Chand Thakur, CEO and Co-Founder and NPST
India’s digital payments ecosystem has entered a phase where scale and speed are now the defining operating realities. In FY 2025-26, UPI processed more than 24,000 crore transactions, with total value crossing ₹314 lakh crore, and continued to expand at a strong year-on-year pace. UPI also now accounts for the large majority of retail digital payment volume. At this level of throughput, merchant risk cannot be managed through onboarding-era assumptions.
Merchant acceptance has also broadened sharply across neighbourhood retail, platform sellers, digital-first service providers, and small businesses that now transact nationally from day one. Instant activation has become a market expectation. That is a welcome shift for inclusion and commerce, but it has also exposed a structural gap. Merchant acquisition is now real time, while underwriting in many institutions is still periodic. This mismatch is becoming a material business risk.
Why...
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