Effective August 1, 2025, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will roll out regulations for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in an attempt to add efficiency, security, and reliability to the system. The whole gamut of operational concerns comes into play with 18.4 billion monthly transactions negotiating through UPI, worth an astronomical figure of ₹24.04 lakh crore, which all tend to put immense stress on the servers leading to outages. The changes will directly affect the users of phone apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm.
Balance and Account Checks Limits Imposed
Too many API calls and those become almost unnecessary at times. To this slight inconvenience, NPCI has given a limit of 50 balance checks per day per UPI app to prevent excessive server load. Likewise, linked-bank-account list viewing cannot exceed 25 times daily per app. These restrictions are aimed at heavy users so as to allow smooth functioning of the system during peak hours without any effect on regular transactions, which are limited to ₹1 lakh or ₹5 lakh in certain categories such as healthcare.
Can’t Miss Autopay Slots
UPI autopay transactions, like subscriptions, EMIs, and utility bills, will operate in assigned time slots before 10:00 AM, between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM, and after 9:30 PM, to avoid congestion. The mandate executes only once but may be retried up to three times to guarantee reliability without overburdening the infrastructure. Entities that depend on recurring payments will have to work with these timings so as not to face any disruption.
Transaction Status and Chargeback Restrictions
A user can check the status of a transaction just three times and only once every 90 seconds to reduce the stress of unwarranted repetitive queries on the servers. Chargebacks have been limited to 10 per 30 days, with a cap of five against the same entity, to ensure counterproductive attempts against the entities are voided and to facilitate fast dispute settlements. These restrictions came on the heels of NPCI cutting down API response times to 10 seconds in June 2025.
Enhanced Security Measures
UPI apps show recipient’s verified bank-registered name for payment confirmation after June 30, 2025, to prevent fraud or entering wrong destinations. Poorly maintained UPI IDs that are linked to mobile numbers unused for more than 90 days will become inactive by default, requiring the end-user to update details. Banks and PSPs will be obliged to ensure, on a weekly basis, database updates from the Mobile Number Revocation List and conduct an annual cybersecurity audit for compliance.
User Actions and Compliance
No manual action is required on the user’s part since all apps will implement these changes by default. Users should keep an eye on the recipient’s name, avoid checking balances, and schedule autopays only during the slots allocated. With 675 banks working on UPI, these rules ensure it stays ahead in the growth route as that of India’s top digital payment system conducting 75% of retail transactions.
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