Credit Card Rules, UPI Lite, Train Ticket Booking: Check Major Changes Coming To Effect From Nov. 1

November is set to bring in a host of changes to policies and regulations affecting citizen's day-to-day life. Starting Nov.1 updates across diverse domains, especially financial regulations will come into play. This includes the Reserve Bank of India's new rule for domestic money transfers (DMT) and update to UPI Lite limits.

Keeping track of the new changes from Nov. 1 is important because they may affect your budgetary decisions

Here's a list of policy and regulation changes that will come into effect on Nov. 1.

Starting Nov. 1, the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) new framework on Domestic Money Transfer (DMT) will come into effect. This framework aims to ensure adherence to current financial legislation and make domestic money transfers more secure. 

"There has been a significant increase in the availability of banking outlets, developments in payment systems for funds transfers, and ease in fulfilling KYC requirements etc., since then; and now users have multiple digital options for funds transfer. A review was recently undertaken of various services facilitated in the current framework," read an RBI circular dated July 24.

Leading private sector lender ICICI Bank has updated its credit card rules and rewards program.  The updates, set to come into effect from Nov. 15, include discontinuation of spa benefits, removal of fuel surcharge waiver over Rs 1 lakh, 1% fee on education payment via a third party, spend threshold for Annual Fee and revised late payment charges. 

SBI Cards is implementing new rules that will affect credit card users’ utility bill payments and finance charges, starting Nov. 1. The finance charges for unsecured SBI credit cards will be hiked to 3.75% per month. Further, a 1% fee will be applied for utility bill payments exceeding Rs 50,000 in a billing cycle

Starting Nov. 1,  the single transaction limit in UPI Lite will be increased to Rs 1,000 from the current Rs 500. Additionally, UPI Lite users may choose to keep a balance of up to Rs 5,000 in their wallet, up from the current limit of Rs 2,000.

The auto top-up feature enables users to set a pre-determined balance threshold, below which the account will automatically be loaded with a pre-decided amount. 

The India Railways has updated the time limit for advance train ticket booking to 60 days from 120 days. This period is exclusive of the day of the train's departure.  

The changes will come into effect on Nov.1 but will not impact bookings already made. 

As part of TRAI's new policy to tackle spam and fraud, telecom companies have to implement message traceability from Nov. 1. This will allow users to track the origin of transactional and promotional messages. The numbers that fail to maintain traceability standards will be blocked.

Petroleum companies revise the LPG rates at the start of every month. Continuing this practice, petroleum companies are likely to announce the updated LPG rates on Nov. 1.