UPI Transactions to Get Breakneck Speed from Today; New Rules to Roll Out by July

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has made major changes to India's digital payment ecosystem. These changes have made Unified Payments Interface (UPI) operations much faster and more efficient.  The NPCI has cut reaction times for key UPI services as of today, June 16, 2025. More changes are coming in late July and early August.

 Half the Time: What's Different Today?

 NPCI's April 26 circular said that reaction times for UPI APIs had to be cut down by a lot:

 From 30 seconds to 15 seconds for Request Pay and Response Pay (sending and getting money).

• Check the Status of a Transaction: from 30 seconds to 10 seconds
• Backing up a transaction: from 30 seconds to 10 seconds
• From 15 seconds to 10 seconds to validate the address of

These changes are good for banks that send money, banks that receive money, and payment service providers (PSPs) like Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay.  Our goal is for faster approvals, fewer delays, and a better UPI network experience for all users in India.

More upgrades are on the way:  Rollouts in July and August

As of August 1, NPCI will limit and handle API use to keep the system stable during times of high traffic:

• Users can only do 50 balance checks per app per day.
• You can only make 25 list account requests per day.
• Auto-Pay Mandates, like subscriptions and SIPs, will only work during off-peak hours. Each mandate will get one repeat and up to three follow-ups.
•  "Peak hours" are actually from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.  To keep the network safe, some services may be limited or put off during these times.

NPCI has told banks and PSPs that they need to update their systems by July 31 in order to meet the new rules on speed and transactions per second (TPS).  The goal is to keep the system from getting too busy, like it did on April 12 when too many API calls caused UPI services to stop working for five hours.

 Why this is important

 With about 16 billion UPI transactions every month, the site gets a lot of use, especially when sales are high.  When systems fail or slow down, users are bothered, and trust in digital funds is lost. NPCI wants to improve UPI's dependability and user experience by cutting response times in half now and controlling high-frequency requests in the future.

How Users Can Look Forward to Faster Payments:  It will take about 10 to 15 seconds for UPI transfers, refunds, and status changes to finish.

Transparent Speed: If a transaction fails, users will get proof faster and be able to see what they need to do next.

API Use Caps: The number of frequent balance checks or required cars will be limited, which will help the system run more smoothly.

Basically, these staged updates strengthen UPI's place as a quick, reliable, and easy-to-use digital payment method crucial to India's efforts to move away from cash.