UPI Rules Change: The UPI has replaced the cash as a payment option very fast. UPI has now become the main option for payment from e-rickshaws to metro trains and vegetable shops. UPI has made a major change in the rules to make digital transactions easier and safe. The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) is going to block such transactions from February 1 that uses a special character in the UPI ID. NPCI has issued a circular about this that ID transactions made from special characters will not be accepted from 1 February. Users can only pay through an ID made of alphanumeric characters.
What is the difference between IDs with special characters and alphanumeric characters?
If you are also using an UPI app that uses special characters (for example- @, #, $,! Etc.) in the transaction ID, then the transaction will be rejected by the central system. The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) wants to standardize the UPI Transaction ID generation process and for this reason all the payment ecosystem players have appealed to use only ‘alphanumeric’ characters.
ID with special characters- UPI@2345! 67890#ab $ cd
ID with alphanumeric characters- upi1234cbdc67899
In this example, in the first transaction ID @,#,! For example, this ID is invalid. At the same time, the second transaction ID is valid because it contains only letters and numbers.
When will the new rule come into force
NPCI said in a circular issued on 9 January, “We are working on improving compliance with ecosystem. Although this problem has been solved to a large extent, it has been seen that some participants are still not complying. Keeping in mind the importance of compliance with the specifications, it has been decided that the UPI transaction ID will not allow any special characters. If the ID of a transaction has special letters, it will be rejected by the central system. This rule will be effective from 1 February 2025. ”
A significant increase in use of UPI has been observed for daily transactions. According to December 2024 data, the UPI transaction reached a record high level of 16.73 billion. This is 8% higher than the total transaction in November.