New Delhi. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has directed to comply with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to increase the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) transaction limit to ₹ 5 lakh for hospitals and educational services by January 10. This means customers will soon be able to pay up to ₹5 lakh through UPI for expenses like medical bills at hospitals or fees for educational services.
To ensure compliance, NPCI has directed banks, payment service providers (PSPs) and UPI applications to increase the transaction limits for the specified merchant categories (hospitals and educational institutions). NPCI has clarified that the increased limit from ₹1 lakh to ₹5 lakh will be applicable only to “verified merchants”.
Circular issued
NPCI said in the circular, “Members (PSPs and banks), UPI apps, merchants and other payment providers are requested to make the requisite changes. “Members are requested to ensure its compliance by January 10, 2024.” Merchants are required to enable UPI as a payment mode with the increased limit. Currently, the UPI transaction limit set by the National Payments Council of India (NPCI) is ₹1 lakh per day.
The decision was taken in the MPC meeting
RBI had announced this change in the last Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting. Meanwhile, the UPI platform crossed the Rs 100 billion mark in 2023. A total of about 118 billion transactions took place throughout the year. Data shared by NPCI shows that this is an increase of 60% compared to 74 billion transactions recorded in 2022. The total value of UPI transactions in 2023 was approximately ₹182 lakh crore, which is 44% higher than ₹126 lakh crore in 2022.
