From August 1, 2025, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system will see key changes designed to ease system load and prevent disruptions. In a recent circular, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) instructed banks and payment service providers (PSPs) to restrict the use of 10 major Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) on the UPI network by July 31, 2025.
These APIs cover crucial services like balance checks, transaction status updates, and autopay mandate executions. The move is aimed at streamlining operations and maintaining system stability. By capping usage of these APIs, NPCI seeks to deliver a smoother and more reliable digital payment experience for users across the country.
The circular dated May 21, 2025, states that “Banks and Payment Service Providers must ensure they monitor and regulate all API requests—both customer-initiated and system-initiated—in terms of speed and transactions per second (TPS) limits to ensure proper usage on the UPI platform.”
The NPCI circular also cautions that failure to comply with the new API usage guidelines could lead to strict actions, including API restrictions, financial penalties, suspension of new customer onboarding, or any other measures deemed appropriate by NPCI.
NPCI has prescribed the following restrictions:
- Balance Enquiries: Limited to 50 checks per app, per user, per day. This means if you’re using multiple UPI apps like Paytm and PhonePe, you’ll have 50 balance checks on each app.
- Linked Account Queries: Restricted to 25 queries per app, per day, with explicit user consent required.
- Autopay mandates will only be executed during non-peak hours (outside 10 AM-1 PM and 5 PM-9:30 PM). Each mandate will have 1 attempt with up to 3 retries, operating under controlled transaction rates.
- Transaction Status Checks: Banks and apps must wait at least 90 seconds before checking transaction status after authentication. Only 3 status checks are allowed within a 2-hour window per transaction.
- Non-user-initiated API calls will be restricted during peak hours (10 AM-1 PM and 5 PM-9:30 PM) to reduce system load.
Compliance and Audits:
- Banks and payment service providers must submit undertakings by August 31, 2025, confirming they are queuing and throttling API calls properly.
- Acquiring banks are required to undergo annual system audits by CERT-In empanelled auditors, starting August 31, 2025.
These changes aim to ensure the stability, speed, and reliability of the UPI system, particularly during high-traffic periods. Users may need to adjust their habits, especially heavy users, but the changes are designed to benefit the overall digital payments ecosystem.