Account-to-account transfers free on UPI: NPCI

Mumbai: National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Wednesday clarified that bank account-to-account transactions continue to remain free for customers and merchants.

The company said that interchange charges are applicable only to UPI transactions made through PPI wallets.

NPCI recently issued guidelines that allowed prepaid payment Instruments (PPI wallets) to be part of the interoperable UPI ecosystem.


"NPCI has now permitted the PPI wallets to be part of the interoperable UPI ecosystem," the company said in a press release. "The interchange charges introduced are only applicable for the PPI merchant transactions and there is no charge to customers, and it is further clarified that there are no charges for the bank account to bank account based UPI payments."

Every month, over 8 billion transactions are processed free for customers and merchants using bank accounts. Traditionally, the most preferred method of UPI transactions is linking the bank account in any UPI-enabled app for making payments which contributes over 99.9% of total UPI transactions.