The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s flagship real-time digital payment system, is scheduled to undergo major regulatory upgrades beginning August 1, according to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
In a move aimed at streamlining payment flows and reducing technical disruptions, UPI users will now be allowed to check their account balance a maximum of 50 times per day, a significant drop from the previously unlimited access. Another key change includes fixed time slots for autopay transactions—covering recurring payments such as EMIs, subscriptions, and utility bills—which will now be processed only during designated time windows.
These changes follow multiple outages that impacted millions of users across the country, notably on March 26 and April 12 this year. The adjustments are expected to bolster the platform’s efficiency and reduce peak-hour congestion.
A recent IMF note, titled Growing Retail Digital Payments: The Value of Interoperability, emphasised India’s UPI dominance in global payment systems, even surpassing Visa in transaction volume. UPI currently powers about 85% of India’s digital transactions and accounts for approximately 60% of global real-time payments.
While the new changes won’t directly disrupt consumers’ payment routines, businesses may need to realign their collection schedules to adapt to the time-specific processing windows.
With these upgrades, NPCI aims to make UPI even more reliable, ensuring smoother operations for users and merchants alike.
