Govt announces new guidelines for UPI Payments in New Year

In our country, UPI has become an integral part of digital payments. Whatever they buy people are paying money with UPI apps. Since its inception, digital transactions have been done in crores daily. The government has now introduced some changes to make UPI payments better.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced that UPI IDs such as Google Pay, Paytm and Phone Pay, which have not been used for a year, will be removed. It said that this decision has been taken to stop frauds from happening due to such accounts. These can be reactivated if desired.

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NPCI has increased the maximum daily payment limit for UPI transactions to Rs 1 lakh. However, on December 8, the RBI increased the UPI transaction limit to Rs 5 lakh for education and healthcare facilities. Earlier the transaction limit was Rs 1 lakh.

The change was announced in early 2023. Through Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) like online wallets an interchange fee of 1.1 percent is applicable for transactions worth more than Rs 2,000. Only certain merchants incur such charges. There are no other additional charges while doing transactions.

A limit may be in place to reduce the increasing cases of online payment fraud. Between users who have not transacted before, a time limit of four hours is expected for the first payment worth more than Rs 2,000. Soon UPI users will be able to activate the ‘Tap and Pay’ feature. However, an official announcement is yet to be made. This feature can be used only if the mobile phone has a Near-field Communication chip (NFC).

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RBI will introduce UPI ATMs across the country. With these ATMs, you can scan the QR code to withdraw cash directly from your bank account. For this RBI has entered into an agreement with Hitachi of Japan. Another thing is that now whoever sends money from UPI apps, the full name in their bank account will be displayed on the screen.

Last month, there were 12.02 hundred crore UPI transactions worth Rs 18.23 lakh crore. Compared to November, their value has increased by five percent. Last year there were 117 hundred crore transactions worth Rs 183 lakh crore. The value of transactions increased by 59 percent compared to the previous year.