The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has implemented a series of new Unified Payments Interface (UPI) rules starting today, aimed at reducing server load during peak hours and improving user experience in India’s rapidly growing digital payment ecosystem.
Key changes include limits on balance enquiries, revised auto-payment processing windows, and enhanced transparency in recipient details — part of broader efforts to streamline UPI operations as daily volumes surge past 600 million transactions.
Balance Enquiry and Bank Details
Users can now check their bank balance up to 50 times a day on any UPI app. To curb excessive server strain during peak periods, apps may restrict or defer balance enquiry requests. Additionally, users will now be able to view their available balance with every transaction for real-time financial clarity.
For bank account visibility, users can check details of banks linked to their mobile number 25 times daily, and only after selecting the issuing bank within the app interface.
Auto Payment Window
Recurring auto-debit transactions — such as subscriptions and utility bills — will now be processed only during non-peak hours: before 10 AM, between 1 PM to 5 PM, and after 9:30 PM. This new window is designed to reduce load on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) during busy periods. If a scheduled auto-payment fails, retries will be initiated; otherwise, the transaction will be canceled automatically.
Transaction Status and Limits
To reduce confusion around pending transactions, the new rules mandate that unconfirmed UPI payments must update status within seconds, rather than lingering in a pending state.
Users will now be able to check the status of a transaction only three times, with a mandatory 90-second gap between each attempt.
Recipient Verification
As a safeguard against fraud, the recipient’s registered name will now be displayed to the sender before the transaction is confirmed, along with the transaction ID — a move designed to help users avoid misdirected or unauthorized payments.
India’s UPI Growth in Numbers
According to NPCI data:
- July 2025: UPI processed 19.47 billion transactions worth ₹25.08 trillion
- June 2025: 18.39 billion transactions, ₹24.03 trillion
- May 2025: 18.68 billion transactions, ₹25.14 trillion
- UPI now averages over 7,000 transactions per second
- For FY 2024–25, UPI is projected to exceed 200 billion transactions, with a cumulative value of ₹291 trillion
With these figures, UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payment infrastructure, supporting real-time, mobile-based, peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions across all demographics.
