India’s most popular digital payment system, UPI (Unified Payments Interface), is now faster and more efficient starting June 16, thanks to major backend improvements announced by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
One of the key updates is a major reduction in response time for UPI operations. For instance, the time taken to check transaction status or reverse a transaction has been reduced from 30 seconds to just 10 seconds. Similarly, verifying an address during ‘Pay’ or ‘Collect’ actions will now take 10 seconds instead of 15. These upgrades are expected to speed up transaction confirmations and help resolve failed payments quicker on apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm.
In another big update, NPCI will introduce daily usage caps on certain UPI features from July 31, 2025. These changes aim to reduce network load and improve system stability during peak usage times.
Here are the new limits:
Balance checks will be limited to 50 times per user per day across all UPI apps.
Fetching account lists will be capped at 25 times per app per day.
Autopay mandates will have one main attempt and up to three retries, but these retries must happen outside peak hours (10 am–1 pm and 5 pm–9:30 pm).
Banks, payment service providers (PSPs), and partner platforms are required to comply with these changes by July 31, 2025.
These updates are part of NPCI’s broader push to make UPI more reliable and seamless as it continues to handle billions of transactions every month.
