UPI Circle, the latest innovation in Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was rolled out by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) last week. The feature allows UPI users to enable trusted people by letting them have access to their accounts. This way, those even without a UPI account can make transactions with the payment instrument. As per NPCI, the feature is aimed at empowering secondary users who might be financially dependent to access UPI. Last week, Google Pay announced that it will be integrating the feature into its payment app in the country.
NPCI Rolls Out UPI Circle
In a post, NPCI detailed the feature. As per the agency, UPI Circle will allow primary users, who are defined as people with a UPI account linked with their bank account, to authorise secondary users, who may or may not have a UPI account, to perform transactions from the primary user’s account. The feature does come with layers of intervention and security measures.
With the UPI feature, primary users can go to the UPI app of their choice and add the secondary users by scanning a QR code or entering a UPI ID. Manual entry of phone numbers is not allowed at present. Once that is done, secondary users can set up a UPI account and register themselves to use the feature. NPCI highlights that the user must secure the app with either passcodes or biometric authentication to be able to make transactions.
There are two divisions for secondary users as well — partial delegation and full delegation. Partial delegation will require the primary user to approve the transaction every time before the payment can be made. With full delegation, secondary users will have a maximum monthly limit, but they can independently make transactions without requiring permission.
NPCI has set the maximum monthly delegation limit at Rs. 15,000 where a single transaction cannot exceed Rs. 5,000. Also, for the first 24 hours, the secondary user will have a limit of Rs. 5,000. The agency claims that the primary user will have the option to monitor the activity of the secondary users on the app. A primary user can set different maximum limits (under Rs. 15,000) for different secondary users.
Notably, a primary user can add up to five secondary users, however, a secondary user can only accept a single primary user. The primary user can also revoke access to the secondary user at any given time.