UPI Offline Payments Limit Increases to Rs 500, France to Soon Start UPI

In the last few years, transactions through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have increased rapidly in the country. To increase the scope of these transactions, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed to increase the limit of payment per transaction for UPI Lite offline from Rs 200 to Rs 500. Along with this, some other measures have also been announced to increase the reach and use of digital payments.

RBI had earlier fixed an overall limit of Rs 200 per transaction and Rs 2,000 per payment instrument for low value digital payments through offline mode. Removing the need for two-factor authentication for low value transactions will enable faster and reliable transactions through channels like UPI Lite and National Common Mobility Card (NCMC). Giving information about the decisions of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said, “With the aim of using new technologies to improve the experience of digital payments for users, the limit of low value digital payments in offline mode has been increased to Rs 200. It has been proposed to increase the total limit per payment instrument to Rs 2,000. This will increase the scope of digital payments in the country.

UPI Lite was launched by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and RBI last year. This is a version of the UPI payment system. It is specially designed for low value transactions. Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that France has agreed to use UPI. He had said that soon Indian tourists will be able to make payments using UPI from the Eiffel Tower. Earlier, United Arab Emirates, Bhutan and Nepal had implemented this payment system.

Modi had said, “An agreement has been signed with France for the use of UPI. It will start from the Eiffel Tower and now Indian tourists will be able to make payments in rupees through UPI.” Last year, NPCI had signed an MoU with a French payment system called Lyra. Earlier this year, an agreement was signed between UPI and Singapore’s PayNow. This will provide facility to users to do transactions in both the countries.