The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a public sector company that operates retail payments and settlement systems in India, has declared new guidelines for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions, which will come into effect from February 1, 2025. According to this new regulation, if a UPI ID contains special characters like #, @, $, or *, it will be blacklisted. This means that every user needs to update his UPI ID to follow the rules with such specially made characters.
According to a circular issued by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on January 9, UPI ecosystem players were advised to use only alphanumeric characters for generating UPI transaction IDs. This is to ensure compliance with UPI technical specifications.
“Considering the criticality of compliance with the specifications, it has been decided not to allow any special characters in the UPI transaction ID. Any transaction with an ID containing special characters shall be declined by the central system. This shall be effective 1 February 2025.”
“All participating entities are advised to take note of the above and ensure compliance. The information herein may please be disseminated to all the concerned for necessary action.”
What Are the Special Characters?
Special characters are any characters that are not part of the standard 26-letter alphabet or numbers 0-9. They include punctuation marks, accent marks, and other symbols.
UPI’s Share In India’s Digital Payments
The share of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India’s digital payments has surged from 34 per cent in 2019 to an impressive 83 percent in 2024, with a remarkable CAGR (cumulative average growth rate) of 74 per cent over the last five years, according to the RBI’s payment system report.
In contrast, the share of other payment systems like RTGS, NEFT, IMPS, credit cards, debit cards, etc. in digital payments volume declined from 66 per cent to 17 per cent during the same period, the report states.
UPI has been the most significant contributor to the growth of digital payments in India due to its usefulness and ease of use, the report points out.
At a macro level, the volume of UPI transactions increased from 375 crore in 2018 to 17,221 crore in 2024, whereas the total value of transactions surged from ₹5.86 lakh crore in 2018 to ₹246.83 lakh crore in 2024.