New UPI Rules Applicable from August 1: Find Out the Major Changes

The NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) has introduced new UPI rules, which will be implemented from Friday, August 1, 2025. These rules will further enhance the efficiency of existing UPI apps and protect users from fraud, applicable to all payment service providers like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm.

What is UPI?

UPI stands for Unified Payments Interface. It is a real-time payment system that allows users to instantly transfer money between bank accounts using a mobile device. It enables both person-to-person and person-to-merchant transactions.

The new rules will regulate activities like checking your bank balance, processing auto-payments and accessing bank details. All these changes have been mentioned in a circular issued by NPCI on May 21, 2025, stating that these changes will further improve the performance of UPI applications.

Read on to find out the various areas that will witness some changes, designed for better user experience and interface, as the UPI payment made becomes the leading method across the country for cashless transactions across domains.

If you are someone who uses the UPI services like PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm frequently, then you must know about these online payment system changes. This will affect your day-to-day UPI transactions but will not cause any hindrance if you are careful with your accounts.

1. Balance Enquiry

Starting today, you will not be able to check your bank balance on your PhonePe, Google Pay and other apps for an unlimited number of times.

• Each UPI app will allow users to check their bank balance 50 times per day. UPI apps will also be able to limit or stop balance enquiry requests to reduce the load on the API (Application Programming Interface) during peak hours.
• From August 1, users will be able to see the available balance in their account with every transaction done, and this will be highly useful given the fact that there is now a cap on checking the account balance manually under new UPI rules.

2. Auto-Payment Processing

Auto payments allow banks to debit a certain amount from users’ accounts automatically on a recurring basis. However, autopayments, when done during the peak hours, can increase pressure on the Application Programming Interfaces (API) system.

• Going forward, the NPCI has mandated that the processing auto-payments for merchants or OTT platforms will now be processed only during non-peak hours – before 10;00 am, between 1:00- 5:00 pm, and after 9:30 pm.
• This means that if an autopayment is due at 11 am, it might be deducted before or after the scheduled time.

3. Bank Details

Customers will be able to see the list of banks linked to their mobile number.

• They can only check the bank’s details 25 times per day from August 1. With this, the customers will only be able to see their bank details only at certain times, after a request is initiated by selecting the issuer’s bank in the UPI app.

4. Transaction Status

Transactions issues are quite frequent during the peak hours when customers experience that money has been debited from the sender’s account but hasn’t been received by the receiver.

• From August 1 onwards, these unconfirmed payments will have a specific time window to update within seconds instead of showing as ‘pending’.
• The user will be able to check the payment status only 3 times, with a time gap of 90 seconds between them.

5. Details of the Recipient

The name of the transaction’s recipient will be shown to the sender before each transaction.

• This is to avoid the occurrence of any plausible fraud or money being transferred to a wrong recipient. The registered name of the recipient will be shown along with the transaction ID on the UPI app.

The circular also notes that in the case of non-compliance with these guidelines, NPCI can take necessary actions, including UPI API restrictions, penalties, suspension of new customers or onboarding of any other measures. With these rules, NPCI is set to increase the efficiency of online payments and reduce fraudulent cases, which have been on a rampant increase in the recent months.