Starting August 1, 2025, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has rolled out a set of new UPI guidelines aimed at streamlining digital transactions, improving system performance, and preventing misuse. These changes apply to all UPI apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, and the associated banks and payment service providers (PSPs).
These updates stem from a compliance notice issued by NPCI on May 21, 2025, and were to be implemented by July 31, 2025. Here’s a breakdown of what’s changed and how it affects UPI users:
Daily Balance Check Now Capped
Users can now check their bank balance only 50 times per UPI app per day. This cap is introduced to stop misuse and bot-driven balance queries. Importantly:
Balance requests must be initiated by the user.
UPI apps cannot auto-trigger balance checks.
During high-traffic hours, apps are encouraged to pause or delay nonessential balance checks.
Issuer banks will now include available balance in the message for every successful UPI transaction
API Usage Restrictions
NPCI has limited the use of the “List Account” API, which shows bank accounts linked to a user’s mobile number:
Capped at 25 requests per app per user per day.
Must be triggered only after the user selects their bank.
Any retry attempt must get user consent again.
UPI Autopay Limited to Non-Peak Hours
Autopay instructions (used for subscriptions, utility bills, SIPs, etc.) will now be executed only between 12:00 AM and 7:00 AM, avoiding busy periods like 10:00 AM–1:00 PM and 5:00 PM–9:30 PM.
Each autopay mandate gets 1 main attempt + 3 retries (4 total).
Alerts can still be shown during the day, but actual payments will be processed overnight.
Faster Transaction Status Updates
To reduce confusion from long “Processing” messages, UPI apps must confirm success or failure of a payment within a few seconds.
Tighter Security for Linking Bank Accounts
New protocols mean users will face additional verification steps when linking a bank account to a UPI app. This move strengthens account security and ownership validation. While most users won’t notice drastic changes, these backend improvements aim to make UPI transactions safer, faster, and more reliable.
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