The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will roll out new Application Programming Interfaces (API) usage rules for all banks and payment apps. This includes Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, and others. NPCI has directed all parties to monitor API usage based on the new guidelines and violations may lead to penalties, restrictions, or even suspension of new customer onbarding. NPCI has set a deadline of July 31, before which all banks and payments app have to comply.
The new API usage rules by NPCI are targeted at balance check limits, transaction status checks, autopay limits, and account list access checks. With UPI accounting for over 80 percent of all digital transactions, repeated outages and failures have compelled experts to throttle at the system level and bring stricter API usage guideline.
Some of the major changes include:
Balance check limits: According to the new rules, users will be be able to check balance for up to 50 times a day per UPI app. This means if a user uses two UPI apps, they will be able to check their balance for 50 times per day in each app. NPCI says that this is done to prevent repeated API calls that often slows down the system.
Transaction status checks: Users will be able to check the stuck payment status only three times with a gap of 90 seconds between each check. Again, this is done to lower outage issues and reduce load on UPI servers.
Account list access limits: The ability to check which bank accounts are linked to their number will be capped at 25 times a day per app. Furthermore, this will only work if the user selects a bank and gives consent.
Fixed autopay time slots: Moving forward, subscription based auto debit facility will be processed only during non-peak hours. This includes before 10am, between 1-5pm, and after 9.30pm.
Autopay mandate execution: For exceuting UPI Autopay mandates a maximum of 1 attempt and 3 retires will be permitted.
Mandatory balance with notifications: NPCI is mandating all banks to now include updates to account balances in every transaction notification sent via message or a pop-up. This will reduce balance checks and API overload.
NPCI clarifies that these measures have been taken to reduce outage, failures, and downtime of UPI servers due to unnecessary checks overload. Check out the full list of guidelines here.
