New UPI Rules from August 1, 2025

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has transformed how transactions flow in India. UPI, which has become the backbone of our digital economy, and from street vendors to large corporations, UPI transactions have increased rapidly to now processing billions of transactions per month. To address that scale, while ensuring that the platform continues to be safe and secure for the coming years, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) released several new operational rules that will take effect from August 1, 2025.

The operational rules are not intended to hinder you as a user; they are actions taken by NPCI to improve the performance of UPI, and maintain its security and reliability. It's important to understand what these operational rules are if you're a user of UPI as an individual or business. So we have put together a guide with everything you need to know while presenting it in a clear and easy-to-read format.

1. A New Cap on Daily Balance Enquiries

• The New Rule: Users can carry out balance checks via UPI apps to any bank account up to 50 times throughout a single day.
• A Closer Look: Each time you press "Check Balance", your chosen UPI app sends a request to each bank's core banking system. One request is not a big deal, but millions of requests followed by millions more requests can create problems. While the vast majority of users will not notice any issues, this limit is designed to limit the usage of automated scripts or bots who abuse the ability to check account balances and more importantly, free up banking resources for payment transaction use. In the broad scheme of things, the 50 checks will be more than enough for the average user, and will not affect normal usage.

2. Checking the Status of Pending Transactions

• The New Rule: You are now permitted to check the status of a "pending" or "stuck" transaction only three times within a day. A mandatory waiting period of 90 seconds is also required between each status check.
• Why This Matters: A transaction is typically stuck due to a communication gap between the two banks. Each time you check on a "pending" or "stuck" transaction, you introduce a new pending query, which may even interrupt the system's ability to resolve the earliest pending transaction. This rule is to encourage users to allow some time (minutes) for the system to determine, automatically, the final status (success or failure) so we can resolve the transaction most quickly and accurately.
  

3. New Schedule for Auto-Payments and Mandates

• The New Rule: All recurring payments set up via UPI, such as monthly bills, OTT subscriptions, and loan EMIs, will now be processed during specific non-peak hours. These time slots are: before 10:00 am, between 1:00 pm and 5:00 pm, and after 9:30 pm.
• The Bigger Picture: Processing millions of scheduled auto-payments simultaneously requires significant system resources. By scheduling payments during periods of typically lower user-initiated real time traffic (e.g., outside of lunch times), the NPCI succeeds in maintaining speed and minimal congestion in the network when users make their everyday peer-to-peer and merchant payments. Your mandates will still be processed on the scheduled date, but backend scheduling prevents network-related slowdowns across the system.

4. Limit on Viewing Linked Bank Account Details

• The New Rule: A user can view the information of all bank accounts linked to their mobile number a maximum of 25 times in a 24-hour period.
• The Security Angle: While a minor change, this rule adds a layer of security. It makes it slightly more difficult for any malicious app or actor to repeatedly query the system to gather information about a user's linked accounts, acting as a small deterrent against data scraping activities.

5. Your Available Balance Will Now Display After Each Payment

• The New Rule: After completing any successful UPI transaction, the app will now automatically display your updated bank account balance.
• A Boost for Financial Awareness: This is a significant user-centric improvement. It offers immediate transparency, allowing you to instantly confirm that the correct amount was debited. This feature helps in better financial tracking and enables you to spot any discrepancies or unauthorized transactions much more quickly, without the need to perform a separate balance enquiry.

The Rationale

You may be asking why these changes are being made at this time. UPI has been extremely successful. The nature of UPI's growth in users and transaction volumes means we are always managing our infrastructure to avoid any issues as it grows - just as a city optimized road rules managed to avoid car collisions!

In a formal statement, the NPCI highlighted that "These new rules aim to enhance system performance and reduce fraud risks across the country." By optimising system queries and managing batch processes, these measures ensure the UPI platform remains stable, swift, and secure, ready to handle the next wave of growth in India's digital payments journey.

For the majority of users and businesses, these changes are taking place in the background, and they are positive changes. They are the maturation of the UPI ecosystem which ensures that this core element of India's digital infrastructure continues to be best in class for years.