UPI transactions set to become faster from June 16

Transactions through UPI are set to become faster from Monday with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) mandating reduction in response time to as swift as 10 seconds for payments.

UPI or Unified Payments Interface is a real-time payment system developed by NPCI to facilitate inter-bank transactions through mobile phones.

According to a recent NPCI circular, transactions including money transfer, status checks, and reversals will now be completed in 10 to 15 seconds, as against 30 seconds.

Effective June 16, the time taken in a UPI payment to validate address will now take only 10 seconds compared to 15 seconds earlier. The revisions in response time are aimed at improving customer experience, NPCI said.

As per another NPCI circular, customers will soon be able to check their account balance 50 times a day through their UPI apps.

As of now, there is no limit to check account balance in a day and the threshold of 50 has been introduced keeping in mind system efficiency and ease load, according to an expert.

The number of transactions through UPI increased 33 per cent in May to 1,868 crore while the amount involved rose 23 per cent to Rs 25.14 lakh crore.

To instil confidence in customers that they are sending money to the correct beneficiary and to avoid potential risk, NPCI has mandated that UPI apps display only the ultimate beneficiary’s name for transactions.

Moreover, it has also been mandated that UPI apps should disable any feature allowing users to modify their ‘beneficiary name’ for transaction purposes in the app interface.

All the stakeholders in the UPI ecosystem should follow the norms by June 30.