NPCI to Decline UPI Transactions That Contain Special Characters in the Transaction ID

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) issued a new notification earlier this month announcing new compliance guidelines. The new rules are aimed at all the members of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and state that any transaction identifier (ID) that contains special characters will be declined starting February 1. The notification is aimed at ensuring compliance with the technical specifications of UPI that were first implemented in March 2024. This means UPI platforms that continue to issue special characters in the transaction ID will witness a high volume of failures.

NPCI Issues New Compliance Guideline for UPI Platforms

In a notification issued on January 9, NPCI detailed the new compliance guideline. The agency first issued a guideline on March 28, 2024, to the entire UPI ecosystem advising them to stop using special characters in transaction IDs. In the latest notification, NPCI said that while the issue has been largely resolved, some participants have continued to be non-compliant.

Now, NPCI has set a deadline of Saturday, February 1, post which any transaction IDs containing special characters will not be completed and the payment will be declined.

This compliance requirement does not require any action from the end users. However, both the merchants and users should ensure that the transaction IDs do not contain special characters, otherwise the payment might be declined. Updating their UPI apps to the latest version may also help in avoiding any unintended glitches and bugs.

NPCI highlighted that it has been working with the ecosystem for the last year to help the UPI players adapt to the new guidelines. The decision to move to simple alphanumeric characters was taken to simplify the transaction IDs and to make it easier to store and track transactions.

Notably, UPI transaction IDs are also required to be unique and 35 characters long to meet NPCI's technical requirements. This rule has also been mandated to banks and other payment services alongside UPI platforms.