Significant improvements will be made to India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system beginning august 1, 2025, to prevent outages and minimize system overload. By July 31, 2025, banks and payment service providers (PSPs) must restrict the usage of ten essential application Programming Interfaces (APIs) on the UPI network, according to a circular issued by the National Payments Corporation of india (NPCI).
Essential features including balance queries, transaction status checks, and autopay mandate executions are included in the ten APIs. Preventing outages and lessening the strain on the UPI system are the objectives. By putting these restrictions in place, NPCI hopes to give consumers a more reliable and effective wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW'>digital payment experience.
"Banks and Payment service Providers must make sure they watch and control all API requests (in terms of speed and transactions per second limits) sent to UPI for proper usage (both customer-started and system-started requests)," according to the circular dated May 21, 2025.
The NPCI circular cautions that failure to follow the new API usage standards could lead to penalties, restrictions on the API, suspension of new client onboarding, or other actions that NPCI deems appropriate.
NPCI has prescribed the following restrictions:
Balance Inquiries: 50 checks per app, per user, per day is the limit. This implies that you will have 50 balance checks on each UPI app, such as paytm and PhonePe if you use more than one.
Linked Account inquiries: Subject to user authorization and limited to 25 inquiries per app, per day.
Only during non-peak hours (after 10 AM–1 PM and 5 PM–9:30 PM) will autopay regulations be implemented. Operating under restricted transaction rates, each mandate will have one attempt and a maximum of three retries.
Checks of Transaction Status: Following authentication, banks, and applications must wait a minimum of 90 seconds before checking the status of a transaction. Per transaction, only three status checks are permitted in two hours.
To lessen system stress, non-user-initiated API calls will be prohibited during peak hours (10 AM–1 PM and 5 PM–9:30 PM).
Audits and Compliance:
By august 31, 2025, banks and payment service providers are required to provide undertakings attesting to their proper queuing and throttling of API calls.
Beginning august 31, 2025, CERT-In empanelled auditors will conduct yearly system audits of acquiring banks.
The purpose of these modifications is to guarantee the UPI system's dependability, speed, and stability, especially during times of high traffic. Although heavy users in particular may need to modify their behaviors, the adjustments are intended to improve the ecology surrounding digital payments as a whole.
Essential features including balance queries, transaction status checks, and autopay mandate executions are included in the ten APIs. Preventing outages and lessening the strain on the UPI system are the objectives. By putting these restrictions in place, NPCI hopes to give consumers a more reliable and effective wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW'>digital payment experience.
"Banks and Payment service Providers must make sure they watch and control all API requests (in terms of speed and transactions per second limits) sent to UPI for proper usage (both customer-started and system-started requests)," according to the circular dated May 21, 2025.
The NPCI circular cautions that failure to follow the new API usage standards could lead to penalties, restrictions on the API, suspension of new client onboarding, or other actions that NPCI deems appropriate.
NPCI has prescribed the following restrictions:
Balance Inquiries: 50 checks per app, per user, per day is the limit. This implies that you will have 50 balance checks on each UPI app, such as paytm and PhonePe if you use more than one.
Linked Account inquiries: Subject to user authorization and limited to 25 inquiries per app, per day.
Only during non-peak hours (after 10 AM–1 PM and 5 PM–9:30 PM) will autopay regulations be implemented. Operating under restricted transaction rates, each mandate will have one attempt and a maximum of three retries.
Checks of Transaction Status: Following authentication, banks, and applications must wait a minimum of 90 seconds before checking the status of a transaction. Per transaction, only three status checks are permitted in two hours.
To lessen system stress, non-user-initiated API calls will be prohibited during peak hours (10 AM–1 PM and 5 PM–9:30 PM).
Audits and Compliance:
By august 31, 2025, banks and payment service providers are required to provide undertakings attesting to their proper queuing and throttling of API calls.
Beginning august 31, 2025, CERT-In empanelled auditors will conduct yearly system audits of acquiring banks.
The purpose of these modifications is to guarantee the UPI system's dependability, speed, and stability, especially during times of high traffic. Although heavy users in particular may need to modify their behaviors, the adjustments are intended to improve the ecology surrounding digital payments as a whole.
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