UPI Transaction IDs With Special Characters Won’t Work From February 1

UPI Transaction IDs With Special Characters Won’t Work From February 1

SUMMARY

As per a circular issued by NPCI on January 9, 2025, any transaction with an ID containing special character will be declined by the central system

The decision will be effective from February 1.

This decision is taken to standardise the UPI ID generation process

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has said that from February 1 users can’t use special characters in Unified Payments Interface (UPI) identity. 

All such information has to be alphanumeric.

As per a circular issued by NPCI on January 9, 2025, any transaction with an ID containing special character will be declined by the central system. This decision is taken to standardise the UPI ID generation process. 

“We have been working with the ecosystem to improve compliance, though the issue has been largely resolved, it is observed that a few of the participants continue to be non-compliant,” the circular added.

This direction has been given to the UPI apps to ensure compliance. It is pertinent to note that NPCI issued a notice in March 2024, advising the UPI ecosystem players to use only alphanumeric characters for generating UPI transaction IDs.

This comes at the heart of UPI transactions surging rapidly and leading the digital payment space in India. For instance, total UPI transactions surged almost 46% to a record 17,220 Cr in 2024 from 11,768 Cr in the previous year. 

Meanwhile, the total value of UPI transactions zoomed over 35% to INR 246.82 Lakh Cr from INR 182.84 Lakh Cr in 2023. 

As per a recent report by RBI, UPI accounted for more than 85% of the digital payment pie in terms of volume in 2024. Additionally, the report said that out of 20,787 Cr digital payments recorded during the year, 17,221 Cr transactions were routed through UPI.

In 2024, the central bank also increased the transaction limit of the UPI Lite Wallet  to INR 5,000 from INR 2,000. Along with this, the offline transaction limit for UPI Lite service was increased to INR 1,000 per transaction from INR 500. 

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