| The three tiers behind every UPI payment in 2026 — the ₹1 lakh default for ordinary transfers, and the higher ₹2 lakh and ₹5 lakh ceilings reserved for specific verified-merchant categories under NPCI's August 2025 circular. |
By Dinesh Kumar S · Published 25 May 2026 · 14 min read
If a UPI payment of yours has ever failed with the message "limit exceeded", you have already met two different rulebooks at once. One is set by NPCI, the body that runs UPI, with the RBI sitting above it. The other is set, quietly and often more strictly, by your own bank. Most pages online mix the two up, which is why the numbers never seem to agree. This guide separates them, anchors every figure to a circular or an official bank page, and gives you a bank-by-bank table you can actually rely on in 2026.
One honest heads-up before we start. The figures below are accurate as of 21 May 2026 and are taken from NPCI circulars, RBI Monetary Policy statements, and each bank's own UPI or FAQ page. UPI limits move. Before any large transfer, open your bank's app and look at the in-app "Limits" screen — that, and not any blog, is the single source of truth for your account on the day.
In This Article
▸ Two rulebooks, not one: the NPCI ceiling vs your bank's default
▸ The ₹1 lakh default — what it actually covers
▸ The higher categories: ₹2 lakh, ₹5 lakh and the ₹10 lakh aggregate
▸ Bank-by-bank UPI limit table (2026)
▸ The 20-transactions cap and the 2025 guard-rails
▸ New user and new device: the ₹5,000 / 24-hour cap
▸ UPI Lite and UPI 123Pay limits
▸ How to actually check your limit
▸ How to raise — or lower — your limit
▸ Frequently Asked Questions
Two rulebooks, not one
NPCI sets a ceiling. Your bank sets a default at or below that ceiling. The RBI sits above both, periodically authorising NPCI to revise the ceiling. That is the whole structure, and once you see it, the conflicting numbers on aggregator blogs stop being confusing.
For ordinary peer-to-peer and standard merchant payments, NPCI's ceiling has been ₹1,00,000 per transaction and ₹1,00,000 per day for years. The RBI's Monetary Policy of 8 December 2023 lifted the ceiling to ₹5,00,000 per transaction for payments to hospitals and educational institutions. NPCI's circular UPI/OC/No.173 dated 24 August 2024 lifted it to ₹5,00,000 per transaction for tax payments. The big change for 2025–26 came with NPCI's circular UPI/OC/No.185/B dated 28 August 2025, effective 15 September 2025: a long list of verified-merchant categories now allows ₹5,00,000 per transaction and up to ₹10,00,000 in a 24-hour window. None of these higher limits apply to person-to-person transfers, which remain at ₹1 lakh.
That single fact — higher limits apply only to verified merchants in specific categories — is where most users get tripped up. You cannot send ₹2 lakh to a friend's UPI ID, no matter what any blog says.
The ₹1 lakh default — what it actually covers
For everything outside the special categories, NPCI's per-transaction cap is ₹1,00,000 and the daily cumulative cap is ₹1,00,000. This covers:
- P2P (person-to-person) transfers — paying a friend, family, a landlord, a freelancer, a tutor.
- P2M (person-to-merchant) payments at standard, non-special-category merchants — your kirana, restaurants, e-commerce, mobile recharges, and most QR codes you scan in a normal day.
A few banks default to less than this. Bank of Baroda's bob e Pay app, for example, has historically defaulted to ₹25,000 per transaction even though the daily cumulative is ₹1,00,000. PNB's older BHIM PNB caps were ₹25,000 per transaction and ₹50,000 per day. Always treat ₹1 lakh as the maximum your bank can give you, not as a guarantee.
The higher categories: ₹2 lakh, ₹5 lakh and the ₹10 lakh aggregate
Here is the consolidated, category-wise picture as of 2026, drawn from the RBI's December 2023 policy, NPCI's circular OC 173 dated 24 August 2024, and NPCI's circular OC 185/B dated 28 August 2025 (effective 15 September 2025).
| Category (verified merchant only) | Per transaction | 24-hour cap | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hospitals (verified) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹5,00,000 | RBI MPC, 8 Dec 2023 |
| Educational institutions (verified) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹5,00,000 | RBI MPC, 8 Dec 2023 |
| IPO subscription (UPI-ASBA) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹5,00,000 | Pre-existing NPCI cap |
| RBI Retail Direct Scheme | ₹5,00,000 | ₹5,00,000 | Pre-existing NPCI cap |
| Tax payments (direct/indirect) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹5,00,000 | NPCI OC 173, 24 Aug 2024 |
| Capital markets (broking, MF, AMC) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹10,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B, 15 Sep 2025 |
| Insurance premium | ₹5,00,000 | ₹10,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B |
| Govt e-Marketplace (GeM) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹10,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B |
| Travel (verified) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹10,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B |
| Credit-card bill payments | ₹5,00,000 | ₹6,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B |
| Collections (EMI / loan / B2B) | ₹5,00,000 | ₹10,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B |
| Jewellery purchase | ₹2,00,000 | ₹6,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B |
| Initial funding (digital account opening) | ₹2,00,000 | ₹2,00,000 | NPCI OC 185/B |
| Standard P2P / Other P2M | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | Default |
Three practical points about this table. First, the higher per-transaction limit only fires if the receiving merchant is correctly classified under the right Merchant Category Code and is on NPCI's verified-merchant list — that is the bank and acquirer's job, not yours. Second, your bank can still set a lower internal cap than NPCI; OC 185/B explicitly preserves this, leaving member banks the discretion to set their own internal limits within the NPCI ceilings. Third, some higher caps work only inside your own bank's UPI app, not in a third-party app like Google Pay or PhonePe. If a ₹3 lakh IPO payment fails on a third-party app, retry from your bank's own UPI app before assuming the limit is the problem.
Bank-by-bank UPI limit table (2026)
| Most major banks default to NPCI's ₹1 lakh per-day ceiling — but the daily transaction count and the new-user cooling rules differ, and those are where payments actually fail. |
The numbers below are taken from each bank's own UPI or help page. Banks change these without much notice — confirm in your app before any large transfer.
| Bank | Per txn | Per day | P2P count / 24h | New-user / new-device cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| State Bank of India | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | 20 | ₹5,000 first 24h (Android) / first 5 days (iOS) |
| HDFC Bank | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 or 20 txns | 20 (P2P+P2M) | ₹5,000 first 24h (Android) / 72h (iOS) |
| ICICI Bank | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | 10 (per FAQ) | ₹5,000 first 24h (Android) / 72h (iOS) |
| Axis Bank | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | 20 P2P | ₹5,000 within 24h of registration / device / SIM change |
| Kotak Mahindra Bank | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | 10 (Scan & Pay) | ₹10,000/day for first 7 days on a new device |
| Punjab National Bank | ₹1,00,000 (BHIM PNB default ₹25,000) | ₹1,00,000 | 20 | ₹5,000 first 24h |
| Bank of Baroda (bob e Pay) | ₹25,000 default (raise in-app) | ₹1,00,000 | 20 | ₹5,000 for 24h |
| Canara Bank | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | 20 | ₹5,000 first 24h |
| Union Bank of India | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | 20 | ₹5,000 first 24h |
| IDFC FIRST Bank | ₹1,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 | 20 | ₹5,000 first 24h |
A quick note on Paytm. By press release dated 31 January 2024 (Action against Paytm Payments Bank Limited under Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949), the RBI directed Paytm Payments Bank to stop accepting fresh deposits and credit transactions after 29 February 2024. NPCI then granted One97 Communications Limited (OCL) Third-Party Application Provider status on 14 March 2024 under a multi-bank model. Paytm UPI is now powered by Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India and YES Bank as PSP banks (handles ending @ptaxis, @pthdfc, @ptsbi, @ptyes). The end-user limits are exactly the NPCI defaults — what differs is which bank routes your payment in the background.
The 20-transactions cap, and the rest of the 2025 guard-rails
UPI's daily cap is not only a rupee figure. NPCI also limits how often you can act. Most of the operational guard-rails were tightened by NPCI's operational circular OC-215/2025-26 dated 21 May 2025, effective 1 August 2025:
- 20 outgoing P2P transactions per day across all your UPI apps for one bank account is the most widely applied cap. A few banks publish 10 (ICICI's FAQ states 10 in 24 hours from the first transaction; Kotak's Scan & Pay FAQ also publishes 10). Many publish 20 for P2P and no fixed count for P2M.
- 50 balance checks per UPI app per day. Exceeding this blocks balance checks for 24 hours on that app. The same circular requires your balance to be shown automatically after every successful payment, so most users no longer need to check manually.
- 25 bank-account linkings per app per day via the mobile-number / account-fetch flow.
- A maximum of three transaction-status checks per pending payment, with at least a 90-second gap between attempts.
- Auto-debit mandates (SIPs, EMIs, OTT subscriptions) are processed outside peak windows — defined as 10:00 AM–1:00 PM and 5:00 PM–9:30 PM.
- QR-from-gallery (uploading a screenshot of a QR rather than scanning it live) is capped at ₹2,000 per transaction at Axis Bank and Kotak — a fraud-prevention safeguard, not a UPI-wide rule.
If you hit "20 transactions" before you hit ₹1,00,000 in value, your account is throttled for the rest of the 24-hour window — measured from your first transaction of the day, not from midnight.
New user and new device: the ₹5,000 / 24-hour cap
This is the single most misunderstood rule in UPI, and it has two flavours.
New user. The first time you set up UPI on a bank account, your effective daily limit is ₹5,000 for the first 24 hours on Android. iOS users get a longer cooling period — usually 72 hours (HDFC, ICICI, Axis), and in SBI's case the cap runs for the first five days. After the cooling period, the regular ₹1,00,000 / 20-transactions cap kicks in automatically. You do not need to do anything — and you cannot manually lift this cap.
New device, SIM change or PIN reset. Even a long-time user is hit by the same ₹5,000-for-24-hours cap the moment they re-install the UPI app on a new phone, swap the SIM, or reset the UPI PIN. Axis Bank's UPI terms spell this out: new users, or users who have changed their device or SIM card, can transact only up to ₹5,000 within 24 hours of registration. SBI applies the same cap after a UPI PIN reset.
The practical takeaway: never reset your UPI PIN on the morning of an important large payment. Reset the day before, or keep IMPS / NEFT / RTGS ready as backup.
UPI Lite and UPI 123Pay limits
UPI Lite is an on-device wallet for small, low-friction payments. You load a small balance from your bank account into the wallet, then pay without entering your UPI PIN each time. NPCI's circular UPI/OC/No.169/A — issued on 27 February 2025, giving effect to the RBI direction of 4 December 2024 — sets the current limits to:
- Per-transaction limit: ₹1,000 (raised from ₹500)
- Maximum wallet balance per device: ₹5,000 (raised from ₹2,000)
- Cumulative usage per day: ₹10,000, per NPCI's UPI Lite FAQ
- Replenishing the used limit needs an online UPI-PIN authentication; Auto Top-up is allowed under a separate NPCI circular
Credits and refunds do not go into the Lite wallet — they go to the linked bank account. UPI Lite transactions do not appear line-by-line in your bank passbook (only the top-up does); the detail lives inside the UPI app. UPI Lite X is the offline NFC variant, working between two enabled Android phones at the same ₹1,000 / ₹5,000 limits.
UPI 123Pay is for feature phones, with no internet or smartphone required. The RBI's announcement of 9 October 2024 doubled its per-transaction limit. As of 2026:
- Per-transaction limit: ₹10,000 (raised from ₹5,000)
- Daily limit: aligned with the standard UPI ₹1,00,000 cap
- Initiation modes: IVR call, missed call, an OEM feature-phone app, or sound-based proximity
- From 1 January 2025, Aadhaar-OTP onboarding is mandatory
How to actually check your limit
| A two-minute check: open your bank's own app, find the UPI limits screen, and lower it if you want a built-in safety belt against fraud. |
The one useful habit is to look at the app, not at a blog. The path differs slightly bank by bank, but it is always inside the UPI section of your bank's own app:
- SBI YONO: YONO Pay → BHIM UPI → tap your profile photo → "Set UPI Transaction Limit".
- HDFC Bank: limits are fixed and not user-editable; published at hdfc.bank.in/upi/limit.
- ICICI iMobile Pay: UPI Payments → Manage UPI ID → view current and per-day limits.
- Axis / BHIM Axis Pay: Settings → Modify Transaction Limit (you can lower it; you cannot exceed ₹1,00,000).
- Kotak Mobile Banking: BHIM UPI → Manage → My UPI Profile.
- PNB ONE / BHIM PNB: UPI → Profile → Limits.
- bob e Pay (Bank of Baroda): Profile → Limits.
Third-party apps (Google Pay, PhonePe, BHIM, Paytm) generally do not expose limits in-app, because they only enforce whatever the underlying bank allows. If you have never seen your limit screen, this is the five-minute audit worth doing before any large payment.
How to raise — or lower — your limit
The honest answer most pages avoid: you usually cannot raise your UPI limit above NPCI's ceiling. What you can do is:
- Wait out the cooling period. If you are a new user or just reset your PIN, the ₹5,000 cap lifts automatically after 24 hours (Android) or up to five days (SBI iOS).
- Use your bank's own app. Some banks expose higher category limits only in their own UPI app, not via Google Pay or PhonePe. A ₹3 lakh IPO payment that fails on a third-party app may succeed in your bank's app.
- Check the merchant's category. For ₹2–5 lakh payments the receiving merchant must be verified under the right code. If a hospital payment fails at ₹1.5 lakh, the hospital is not classified as a verified healthcare merchant — that is its bank's issue, not NPCI's.
- Use UPI on RuPay Credit Card for eligible merchant categories, subject to your card limit. P2P is not allowed.
- Switch rails. For a one-shot transfer above ₹1 lakh that fits no verified category, IMPS (up to ₹5 lakh/day), NEFT (no upper cap, round the clock) and RTGS (₹2 lakh minimum) from netbanking are designed for it. Do not split one transfer into many UPI payments — you will hit the 20-transactions cap fast.
- Lower your own limit. If you worry about phishing or SIM-swap fraud, almost every bank app lets you reduce your daily UPI limit below ₹1 lakh. Treat it as a free safety belt for parents and senior users.
Calling customer care to "increase your UPI limit" almost never works for the ₹1 lakh default; what it can do is enable category-based higher caps if your bank has not auto-enabled them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the UPI transaction limit per day in India in 2026?
For ordinary P2P and standard merchant payments, ₹1,00,000 per day and ₹1,00,000 per transaction, with a count cap of 20 outgoing P2P transactions. For verified-merchant categories — hospitals, education, IPO, tax payments, capital markets, insurance, credit-card bills, GeM, travel — NPCI allows ₹2,00,000 or ₹5,00,000 per transaction and up to ₹10,00,000 in 24 hours, per NPCI circular UPI/OC/No.185/B effective 15 September 2025.
Is the higher ₹2 lakh / ₹5 lakh limit available for sending money to a friend?
No. The higher limits apply only to person-to-merchant payments to merchants verified under the right category code. Person-to-person transfers stay capped at ₹1 lakh per day.
Why is my new SBI UPI account stuck at ₹5,000?
SBI applies a new-user cooling cap of ₹5,000 for the first 24 hours on Android and the first five days on iOS. After the cooling window the regular ₹1,00,000 limit activates automatically. You cannot speed this up.
Does the 20-transaction count include payments to shopkeepers?
Banks differ. HDFC counts both P2P and P2M against its 20-in-24-hours cap. Axis caps P2P at 20 and does not cap P2M count. SBI publishes 20 for P2P, with P2M limited only by the ₹1 lakh daily value cap.
What is the UPI Lite limit in 2026?
₹1,000 per transaction, ₹5,000 maximum wallet balance per device, and ₹10,000 cumulative per day — per NPCI's UPI Lite FAQ and circular UPI/OC/No.169/A dated 27 February 2025, giving effect to the RBI's 4 December 2024 direction.
What is the UPI 123Pay limit on a feature phone?
₹10,000 per transaction, raised from ₹5,000 by the RBI's 9 October 2024 announcement. The daily limit follows the standard UPI ₹1 lakh cap.
Can I use UPI to pay a ₹3 lakh hospital bill?
Yes, in principle. The hospital must be classified as a verified healthcare merchant by its acquiring bank, the ₹5,00,000 per-transaction cap must be enabled on your account, and the payment is more likely to go through from your own bank's UPI app than from a third-party app.
Why does my bank's per-transaction default say ₹25,000 when NPCI allows ₹1 lakh?
NPCI sets a ceiling; each bank can set a stricter internal cap. Bank of Baroda's bob e Pay and PNB's older BHIM PNB use ₹25,000 as the per-transaction default. Most banks let you raise this in-app up to ₹1,00,000.
In closing
The UPI limit you actually experience is the intersection of three numbers: NPCI's ceiling, your bank's internal default, and your account's cooling status. For most personal users in 2026, the truthful one-line answer is ₹1 lakh per day for ordinary payments, and up to ₹5 lakh per transaction (₹10 lakh in 24 hours) for a defined list of merchant categories. Anything that promises you a "₹10 lakh UPI limit per day" without naming the category is either wrong or selling you something. Open your bank's UPI app, find the limits screen, and use that — not a blog — as your source of truth before a large payment.
Related Reading on Finance Guided
▸ Direct vs Regular Mutual Fund in India — what the expense ratio costs you over 20 years
▸ Home Loan Prepayment vs SIP — what the real rupee math says
▸ Nominee vs Legal Heir in India — bank, mutual fund and insurance explained
Primary Sources Cited in This Article
· NPCI circular UPI/OC/No.185/B/FY 2025-26, dated 28 August 2025 — higher per-transaction limits for specific categories (effective 15 September 2025). npci.org.in
· NPCI circular UPI/OC/No.173/FY 2024-25, dated 24 August 2024 — tax-payment per-transaction limit raised to ₹5,00,000
· NPCI circular UPI/OC/No.169/A/FY 2024-25, dated 27 February 2025 — addendum on UPI LITE limits (₹1,000 per txn, ₹5,000 wallet)
· NPCI operational circular OC-215/2025-26, dated 21 May 2025 — balance-check, status-check and auto-debit operational caps (effective 1 August 2025)
· RBI Monetary Policy Statement, 8 December 2023 — UPI limit for hospitals and education raised to ₹5 lakh
· RBI Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, 9 October 2024, and direction of 4 December 2024 — UPI Lite ₹1,000 / ₹5,000; UPI 123Pay ₹10,000
· RBI press release dated 31 January 2024 — Action against Paytm Payments Bank Limited under Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949
· NPCI approval dated 14 March 2024 — TPAP status to One97 Communications Limited (OCL)
· NPCI — UPI Lite / UPI Lite X FAQs (npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi-lite/faqs)
· Bank UPI pages: SBI YONO blog; HDFC Bank (hdfc.bank.in/upi/limit); ICICI Bank UPI FAQs; Axis Bank BHIM Axis Pay terms; Kotak Mahindra Scan & Pay help; PNB ONE / BHIM PNB; Bank of Baroda bob e Pay
Disclaimer: This article is for general information and educational purposes only and is not financial, banking, tax or legal advice. Circular numbers, regulation references, portal addresses and limit figures are accurate to the best of the author's knowledge as of 21 May 2026, based on the NPCI circulars, RBI press releases and each bank's own public UPI page cited above. UPI limits change frequently — always confirm the current per-transaction and per-day limit applicable to your account inside your own bank's UPI app before any large transfer. Where a bank's published default differs from the NPCI central cap, the difference is the bank's own internal policy. FinanceGuided.com does not sell any financial product, takes no commissions, runs no paid placements, and recommends no specific bank or UPI app by name. Errors and omissions, if any, are honest; please write in with corrections. Reproduction of any portion of this article requires written permission from the publisher.
Dinesh Kumar S
Founder & Author — Finance Guided · B.Sc. Mathematics, M.Sc. Information Technology · Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Dinesh writes a regulation-reader's column on Indian personal finance — the kind where every claim is anchored to the actual circular number, master direction, regulation, or official page it comes from. His standing rule: if a number or a "rule" cannot be traced to a primary source by document and date, it does not enter the article.
){kind=link}
0 Comments