Highlights
- UPI rules to change from August 1, bringing changes to balance enquiry, autopayment processing, bank details, transaction status, as well as the details of the recipient
- NCPI stated these in a circular released in May 2025
- The new rules are implemented to enhance user efficiency on UPI apps and protect them from fraud
New UPI (United Payments Interface) rules will come into effect from Friday, August 1, 2025. This is to enhance UPI apps' efficiency and user safety. It will apply to all payment service providers in India, including Google Pay, PayTM, or PhonePe.
Implemented by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the rules will regulate activities such as checking bank balance, bank details, and processing autopayments. NPCI issued a circular earlier on May 21, 2025, mentioning the changes and how they will improve performance on UPI apps. Here are the changes that you must know:
- UPI apps can allow users to check their bank balance up to 50 times a day. During peak hours, the UPI apps can limit or stop balance enquiry requests to reduce the load on UPI. Also, from August, users can see their balance left after every transaction they make.
- Through autopayments, banks debit a certain fixed amount from users' accounts regularly. But when autopayments are made during the peak hours, this can increase pressure on the Application Programming Interface (API) systems. So, now NCPI has stated that such transactions will only be processed during the non-peak hours, before 10 am, during 1-5 pm, and after 9:30 pm. This means that if any autopayment is due at 11 am, then it can be deducted before the scheduled time. For successful deduction of autopays, retries will be provided, after which autopayment will be cancelled.
- Users will be able to see the number of banks linked to their mobile number. However, they can check their bank details only 25 times a day. And this can be done only at certain times, where the user will have to initiate a request after selecting the issuer's bank in the UPI app.
- Many times, during the peak hours, users experience that the money has been debited but isn't received on the other end. With the new rules, this kind of unconfirmed payment will have a time window to update, instead of a pending status. The user can check his payment status only thrice, with a gap of 90 seconds in between.
- Before every transaction, a sender will see the name of the transaction recipient. This is to avoid fraud or payment to the wrong recipient. The recipient's registered name, along with their transaction ID, will be visible to shown on the UPI app.
The NCPI circular also states that in case of non-compliance with these guidelines, the organisation can take necessary actions. This includes UPI API restrictions, penalties, suspension of new customers, onboarding, or any other measures.
