New UPI Rules: UPI Transactions Face New Limits from August 1

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has recently issued new rules for all banks and Payment Service Providers (PSPs). They must now control and limit the use of 10 important APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) – these are requests made by customers and other users on the UPI network – by July 31, 2025.

These APIs include checking account balance, running autopay payments, checking if transactions went through, and more. This means that from now on, UPI users will only be able to do these specific activities a limited number of times each day.

“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),” the circular dated May 21, 2025, states.

If banks and PSPs don’t follow these new rules, they could face API restrictions, penalties, suspension of adding new customers, or other actions that NPCI thinks are necessary. Also, all PSPs must submit a written promise to NPCI by August 31, 2025, saying that all system-started APIs will be “queued and rate-limited.”

According to the circular, all non-customer-started APIs must be stopped during busy hours, which are 10 AM to 1 PM and 5 PM to 9:30 PM during the day. Read on to know how these API changes will affect your UPI transactions after July.

Balance Check and Account List Requests Will Be Limited

The balance check API, which lets UPI users ask to see their account balance, will be limited to 50 times per app per customer per day starting July 31. This means that if you use both Paytm and PhonePe, you will only be able to check your account balance on these apps 50 times each within 24 hours.

This might cause problems for traders and other users who check their balances or transactions very often, says a Chief Operating Officer at a payment company. However, this is being done so that UPI’s main system stays stable and available for everyone to use.

“Traders and frequent users who want to check their balances or transaction status may face problems because of the new limits and mandatory waiting time to avoid system overload, which had caused system failures before (including a 90-second delay from when a transaction status check was started),” according to an industry expert.

The circular states that UPI apps must build proper systems to limit or stop balance checks during busy hours. Also, to avoid people asking for balance information repeatedly, banks will now have to send the available balance in a customer’s account with each successful transaction notification.

This also means that customers might not be able to get real-time, updated balance information on their payment apps, says a Chief Product Officer at a payment technology company. However, NPCI has clarified that customers will continue to get real-time, updated balances of their bank accounts even after these new rules are put in place.

Autopay Will Only Work During Non-Busy Hours

Autopay on UPI, which allows users to give permission to their bank to automatically take money from their account on a regular basis (daily, monthly, or at pre-decided times) for things like daily SIP investments, Netflix subscriptions, or other services, will only work during non-busy hours.

“A maximum of 1 attempt, with 3 retries per mandate, can be started at controlled speed only during non-busy hours for autopay,” the circular explains. Note that customers can still set up autopay during busy hours, but the actual money transfer will only happen during non-busy hours.

For the transaction status check API, which lets PSPs and banks ask about transaction status, the circular requires banks and PSPs to wait at least 90 seconds from when the transaction is confirmed before making the first status check call and to keep calls limited to a maximum of three in any two-hour period. Also, banks must treat transactions as failed for certain error codes and stop making repeated “check transaction status” API calls for such transactions.

Also, every bank that processes payments will have to get an annual system check done by auditors approved by CERT-In, with the first audit report to be submitted by August 31 this year.

“Out of the 10 APIs whose usage restrictions have been set by NPCI, only one involves money (autopay). The other nine don’t involve money transfers, which means regular financial transactions will not be significantly affected during busy hours,” says an expert.

Similarly, the account list request, which helps users find all accounts linked to their mobile number, can only be used 25 times per app within every 24 hours by one customer. Also, this can only be triggered once the customer selects their bank in the UPI app and will be tried again only with customer permission.