MUMBAI, INDIA — The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will make a number of big modifications to the rules that govern how UPI apps like Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe work starting on August 1, 2025. The goal of these new rules is to make the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem more efficient, reliable, and secure overall. They will do this by making it easier for people to use the applications during peak hours and speeding up digital transactions across India.
These new restrictions will make big changes to a number of important aspects for the millions of people who use UPI apps numerous times a day.
Starting August 1, UPI will make some important changes:
Limit on Balance Checks: Users can now check their bank account balance up to 50 times a day for each UPI app. This limit is meant to lessen the strain on the system at busy times. In addition, banks must now include the available account balance in the confirmation message that the user gets after every successful financial transaction.
AutoPay During Fixed Hours: UPI will now only process recurring payments and auto-transactions during certain non-peak hours. This includes EMIs, SIPs, and OTT subscriptions. These are times before 10:00 AM, between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM, and after 9:30 PM. If your payment is due during peak hours, which are 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM to 9:30 PM, it could be taken out of your account earlier or later. The system will also only let you try to pay automatically a certain number of times (one initial attempt and up to three retries). After that, the money may not be taken out automatically.
Few Attempts to Get to the Bank Details: Each app will only let users see the list of accounts linked to their cell number 25 times a day. Customers should only be able to make these requests after they have chosen the issuer’s bank in the UPI app. This is meant to cut down on needless API requests and system burden.
Quick Update of Transaction Status: To fix the problem of money being taken out but not received by the recipient during busy times, UPI apps will now have to provide the real status of a transaction within seconds instead of saying “pending” or “processing.” Users will only be able to verify the status of a pending or unsuccessful transaction three times, with a 90-second wait time between each check.
Recipient Name in Every Transaction: A very important security improvement, users will now be able to view the name of the person they are sending money to before they confirm the transaction. This step is meant to stop people from making mistakes when they pay and cut down on fraud.
The NPCI has said that these modifications are meant to make the system far more efficient, reduce server overloads, and eliminate transaction failures, which will encourage more people to use online payments. Most people won’t notice much of a difference in their daily lives. Regular users don’t need to do anything right away because the applications will take care of updates automatically. However, it’s a good idea to be aware of these new constraints.
On May 21, 2025, the NPCI sent out the “Guidelines on usage of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Application Programming Interface (API).” These guidelines had to be followed by all banks and UPI app providers by July 31, 2025. Enforcement started on August 1, 2025. Payment Service developers (PSPs) and UPI app developers may face fines, limited access to the UPI API, or a halt in onboarding new customers if they don’t follow the rules.