NPCI bans special characters in UPI transaction IDs from February 1: Details

From February 1, NPCI will disallow special characters in UPI transaction IDs to standardise processes. This comes as UPI transactions hit record levels.

Updated on: Jan 30, 2025, 19:22:18 IST

By HT News Desk

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Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transaction IDs will no longer be allowed to contain special characters from February 1, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced. Any transactions with such special characters will be automatically rejected by the central system.

UPI is an instant payment system developed by the NPCI. (Representational Image)

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The announcement was made to standardise the process of generating UPI transaction IDs. The NPCI also urged all payment service providers to ensure compliance.

In a January 9 circular, the NPCI instructed all payment companies to use only alphanumeric characters for transaction IDs.

"Reference may be taken from our OC 193 dated March 28, 2024, wherein UPI ecosystem players were advised to used only alphanumeric characters for generating UPI transaction ID. This is to ensure compliance with UPI technical specifications," the official NPCI release read.

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The development comes at a time when UPI transactions are continuing to soar to record levels.

The number of such UPI transactions hit 16.73 billion in December 2024 that is an 8% increase from 15.48 billion in November, India TV reported, citing NPCI data.

The total value of these transactions also reached ₹23.25 lakh crore in December, compared to ₹21.55 lakh crore in November.

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In addition, the daily average transaction count grew to 539.68 million in December,a big increase from 516.07 million in November, according to the report.

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HT News Desk
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