India’s P2P payments are no longer an alternative for high-risk operators — they are becoming a survival tool

A year ago, most operators in India were building their payment stack around Intent UPI. Now the more common question is how much longer that model remains workable, and the answer has less to do with approval rates than with economics.

1. The pressure points are piling up: new freezes, fund holds, cyber cases, constant pressure from banks and law enforcement, and rising operating costs. In other words, the payment flow may still work on paper, but the operating environment is getting more expensive and more fragile every month.
2. The most painful line item is the cost of a single cyber case. Today, one incident can cost from ₹150 000 to ₹2,5 млн. And the merchant is not always the one who created the problem: one “dirty” user or one problematic transaction can put the whole chain under scrutiny, because Indian authorities are increasingly tracking fund movement and connecting payments across the route.
3. The usual answer — “just add strict KYC” — collides with conversion. Most gambling operators are not willing to force every player through full verification, because every extra step cuts the funnel: higher player acquisition cost, fewer deposits, lower profit. That is the basic trade-off, and it is not a theoretical one.
4. As a result, more merchants are moving toward P2P and quasi-solutions. The thing is, P2P is not some clean fix either: it brings its own headaches, including trader sourcing and management, liquidity, quality control, and operations. But it does make risk more manageable, which is why many large operators are treating it less as a backup and more as a priority channel.
5. If Intent used to be the “gold standard,” it is now increasingly viewed as a secondary rail. The next 12–24 months could be decisive for India’s market: if the cost of running Intent keeps rising and pressure from banks and regulators does not ease, the payment model itself will change. The market is no longer choosing between Intent and P2P; it is choosing between growth and survival.