RBI increases UPI Lite limit to Rupees 500, introduces new features such as offline payment
RBI governor Shaktikanta Das announced several new features for UPI at the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on Thursday
UPI has now become a necessity for the majority of Indians as they prefer to use it over cash, especially the younger generations who feel that handling cash can be a hassle. However, there was always an issue with UPI: it needed an active internet connection and there have been plenty of incidences in our daily lives where we just could not complete the payment because of ‘network issues’.
In order to overcome such issues RBI governor Shaktikanta Das announced several new features such as AI-powered transactions, offline payments and increase in limit in UPI Lite at the Monetary Policy Committee meeting on Thursday.
NPCI plans to introduce ‘Conversational Payments’ on UPI, enabling users to engage in conversation with AI-powered systems to make payments in a safe and secure environment. This feature will work on both smartphones and feature phones, helping to increase digital penetration in the country, said Shaktikanta Das. It will be available in Hindi and English at first, and then in more Indian languages later.
RBI has also proposed to increase the per transaction limit for UPI Lite to Rs 500 from Rs 200 in offline mode. Since this channel does not require two-factor authentication, it enables faster, more reliable, and contactless payments for small-value transactions and transit payments. However, the daily limit will be set at Rupees 2,000 to limit the risks associated with relaxing the two-factor authentication.
“There have been demands for enhancing these limits. To encourage wider adoption of this mode of payments and bring in more use cases into this mode, it is now proposed to increase the per transaction limit to Rs 500,” Das said.
Shaktikanta Das also said that offline payments via UPI will also be available soon with the use of NFC technology in UPI Lite. This will make the payments easier as the people will only need to tap their phones on the PoS machines. “To promote the use of UPI-Lite, it is proposed to facilitate offline transactions using NFC technology. This feature will not only enable retail digital payments in situations where internet or telecom connectivity is weak or not available, it will also ensure speed, with minimal transaction decline,” the MPC statement said.
