Major UPI changes from August 1: Here is the full list of balance enquiry limits, pending payment status, UPI security and more from NPCI

Starting August 1, UPI is getting some major upgrades. Let us quickly go through some of these changes, but before that, let’s see the latest numbers of India’s most adopted digital payments system.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) saw a 35 per cent year-on-year jump in UPI transactions of 19.47 billion in July 2025. A total of ₹25.08 lakh crore changed hands on India’s instant digital transfer protocol, up 22 per cent.

This meant, on average, ₹80,919 crore moved in over 628 million transactions per day.

This meant any small change in the protocol would impact many Indians. In that light, here are the latest updates to UPI, effective from August 1 2025:

No more waiting at ‘pending’ status

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has directed UPI apps to update the status of payments that get stuck or are in a pending/processing stage within seconds. This is a major win for consumers, and people will get to know if their payments have failed or not.

More security on bank account linking

With the latest UPI norms come better security. UPI apps will now have to provide more verification methods to ensure the bank account linked to your UPI belongs to you.

Daily limit on bank balance info

This is a major change. In a bid to reduce the load on the UPI system, NPCI has now set a limit on the number of times you check your balance in one day. For balance enquiries, the maximum limit is 50 per day on each UPI app. Moreover, users can only have 25 daily requests for getting the bank details associated with their phone number.

Autopay will now execute in non-peak hours

Apart from the bank info seeking rule, another major change to help with easing the burden of servers is the change in all autopay transactions. To avoid disruptions to real-time transactions, autopay mandates have been moved to non-peak hours. According to a May 2025 circular from NPCI: “Peak hours are defined as the period during the day when UPI financial transactions reach the highest transactions per second, observed from 10:00 hrs (10 am) to 13:00 hrs (1 pm) and from 17:00 hrs (5 pm) to 21:30 hrs (9.30 pm). Any other time shall be referred to as non-peak hour.”

Recipient name shows up in all transactions

From August 1, when you initiate a UPI transaction, the official name linked to the recipient’s account will be displayed before you hit your UPI PIN to complete the payment.

Cap of payment reversals

From now on, within a 30-day window, only 10 payment reversal requests are allowed. However, there is also a cap on requests with each sender at five in the same time period.

Biometrics instead of PIN

This is not a feature that is out everywhere on August 1, but it will roll out soon. NPCI will soon let UPI apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM, Paytm, CRED, PayZapp, etc., let you use your biometrics, such as Face ID and fingerprint, to initiate a transaction instead of your PIN.

More security on UPI API calls

The NPCI also cautioned UPI apps and banks to keep an eye on the potential misuse of system APIs to prevent breaches.

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