RBI Increases UPI Lite Wallet Limit To Rs 5,000 From Rs 2,000

With Unified Payments Interface gaining wider prominence, the Reserve Bank of India has decided to enhance certain limits of UPI products to encourage further adoption, Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday.

For UPI123Pay, which was launched in March 2022, the RBI has enhanced the per-transaction limit to Rs 10,000 from Rs 5,000 earlier.

This facility, which is now available in 12 languages, will further widen the use-case of this product, the statement on developmental and regulatory policies said. Necessary instructions will be issued to National Payments Corporation of India shortly.

To widen the scope of usage of UPI Lite, the central bank has increased the wallet limit to Rs 5,000 from Rs 2,000 earlier and per-transaction limit to Rs 1,000 from Rs 500 earlier.

"The Framework for facilitating small value payments in offline digital mode, issued by the Reserve Bank, under which UPI Lite has been enabled, will be suitably amended," it said.

During the previous monetary policy in August, the central bank had increased the transaction limit of tax payments through UPI to Rs 5 lakh from Rs 1 lakh per transaction. It had also proposed to introduce delegated payments in UPI, which would allow an individual primary user to set a UPI transaction limit for another individual secondary user on the primary user’s bank account.

These developments are expected to further ease transactions for consumers through UPI, as it has become the most preferred mode of payment.

While the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee kept the repo rate unchanged at 6.50% on Wednesday but changed its stance to neutral, possibly paving the way for future interest rate cuts.

The committee decided to unanimously change the stance to neutral and remain unambiguously focused on a durable alignment of inflation to the target while supporting growth, Das said during the speech.

Consequently, the standing deposit facility rate also remained unchanged at 6.25% and the marginal standing facility rate at 6.75%.