Come February 1 and no Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payment app can use special characters for generating transaction IDs. If you are using any such UPI app which uses special characters in the transaction ID, then the transaction will be declined by the central system. 

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The National Payments Corporation of India, a public sector company that operates retail payments and settlement systems in the country, has come out with a new set of guidelines for UPI transactions. The guidelines will come into effect February 1 onwards. 

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According to an UPI circular dated January 9, 2025, “Reference may be taken from our OC 193 dated 28th March 2024 wherein UPI ecosystem players were 
advised to use only alphanumeric characters for generating UPI transaction ID. This is to ensure compliance with UPI technical specifications. We have been working with the ecosystem to improve compliance, though the issue has been largely resolved, it is observed that a few of the participants continue to be non-compliant. Considering the criticality of compliance to the specifications, it has been decided not to allow any special characters in UPI transaction ID. Any transaction with ID containing special characters shall be declined by the central system. This shall be effective from Feb 1.”
 

What are the special characters? 

Special characters are any characters that are not part of the standard 26-letter alphabet or numbers 0-9. They include punctuation marks, accent marks, and other symbols like #, @, $, or *. 

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UPIs growing popularity and security concerns 

As per RBI’s payment system report, UPI has been the most significant contributor to the growth of digital payments in India. It is also evident from the fact that the share of the UPI in India has risen from 34% in 2019 to 83% in 2024, with a remarkable CAGR (cumulative average growth rate) of 74% per cent over the last five years. 

Although most banks and payment platforms have already implemented this change, those who have not updated their IDs, must do so before the deadline. 

(With inputs from agencies)