What’s Changing in UPI from August 2025—and What It Means for You”

What’s Changing in UPI from August 2025—and What It Means for You”

Starting August 1, 2025, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is implementing new rules for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to enhance system efficiency, reduce server load, and improve transaction reliability. 

These changes will affect users of UPI apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, and others. 

Here’s a concise overview of the key updates:

Balance Check Limit: 

Users can check their account balance up to 50 times per day per UPI app. 

This cap aims to reduce unnecessary API calls that overload the system.

Linked Bank Account Checks: 

Checking bank accounts linked to a mobile number is limited to 25 times per day per app to minimize background traffic.

Autopay Time Slots: 

Autopay transactions (e.g., subscriptions, EMIs, utility bills) will be processed in fixed time windows—before 10 AM, 1 PM–5 PM, and after 9:30 PM—to avoid peak-hour congestion. 

Each mandate allows one attempt with up to three retries.

Transaction Status Checks: 

Users can check the status of a transaction only three times per transaction, with a minimum 90-second gap between checks, to prevent system strain.

Mandatory Balance Updates: 

Banks must include account balance updates in every transaction notification to reduce the need for manual balance checks.

No Change to Transaction Limits: 

The payment cap remains unchanged—up to ₹1 lakh per transaction for most cases and ₹5 lakh for specific categories like healthcare and education.

API Restrictions: 

NPCI is limiting the use of 10 key APIs (e.g., balance inquiries, transaction status checks) during peak hours (10 AM–1 PM, 5 PM–9:30 PM) to ensure system stability. Banks and payment service providers must comply by July 31, 2025, and undergo annual audits

Impact and User Action:

These rules apply to all UPI users across all platforms, but casual users who don’t frequently check balances or transaction statuses are unlikely to notice significant changes.

No manual action is required; the changes will be automatically implemented in UPI apps.

Businesses relying on autopay may need to adjust to the new time slots, but individual users should experience minimal disruption.

These updates aim to address issues like payment delays and outages, which affected millions during April and May 2025, by optimizing system performance.

These updates mostly affect frequent users who often refresh balances or payment statuses. 

For everyday payments, you likely won’t notice much difference.