On 1 February, Saturday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present country's general budget in the Parliament. With the budget, many important changes are also going to happen that will have a direct impact on the expenses of the common man. These changes will impact the households across the country.
These new rules include changes in the prices of LPG cylinders used in the kitchen to the rules of UPI payment. An important change related to UPI payments is going to be implemented from February 1, 2025. This change has been made in order to make UPI payments secure and systematic.
As per the new rule, if any UPI app uses special characters (like @, #, $ etc.) in the transaction ID, then that transaction will be cancelled. There are many apps in India that use special characters in the transaction ID.
However, major apps like Paytm and PhonePe do not use special characters in the transaction ID, so they will not get affected.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has instructed all UPI apps to use only alphanumeric (letters and numbers) characters in the transaction ID.
Now as per the rule, if the apps do not follow this rule, their transactions will be rejected after February 1, 2025. NPCI has issued a circular regarding this on 9 January, 2025. It said that from February 1, 2025, all UPI apps will not have to use special characters in the transaction ID.
This new rule can affect common people as if they use UPI from an app that does not follow this rule, then their payment will be cancelled.
NPCI has already given time to all UPI apps to make this change so that they make the transaction ID 35 digit alphanumeric.
Apart from this, apps have also been advised to avoid duplicate transaction IDs. Experts say that this change will improve the system as it will be easier to track transactions, making UPI payments more secure.