RBI ups UPI Lite wallet threshold

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank on Wednesday announced the increase of the UPI Lite wallet limit to Rs5,000 and per-transaction limit to Rs1,000, in order to encourage wider adoption of the popular instant payment system through mobile phones.

A limit of Rs500 per transaction and an overall limit of Rs2,000 per UPI Lite wallet, is presently applicable, with the facility of auto-replenishment. Unveiling the October bi-monthly monetary policy, Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das also said the per-transaction limit in UPI123Pay will be enhanced to Rs10,000 from the current Rs5,000.

UPI123 was launched in March 2022, with a view to enable feature-phone users to use UPI. This facility is now available in 12 languages. In another customer-friendly initiative, Das announced a beneficiary account name look-up facility for Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) systems will be introduced. Payment Systems like UPI and IMPS provide a facility to the remitter to verify the name of the receiver (beneficiary) before initiating a payment transaction. There have been requests to introduce such a facility for RTGS and NEFT systems, the Governor said. “Accordingly, to enable remitters in RTGS and NEFT to verify the name of the beneficiary account holder before initiating funds transfer, it is now proposed to introduce a ‘beneficiary account name look-up facility',” he said. Remitters can input the account number and the branch IFSC code of the beneficiary, following which the name of the beneficiary will be displayed.