RBI Increases UPI Lite Transaction Limit to Rs. 500, Proposes AI-Powered ‘Conversational Payments’

Reserve Bank of India on Thursday announced to increase the transaction payment limit from Rs. 200 to Rs. 500 for UPI Lite in offline mode. UPI Lite was first introduced in September 2022, allowing users to make transactions for a small amount limit in offline mode. Since then, the feature has been adopted by PhonePe, Paytm, and Google Pay as well. Meanwhile, a few other features including conversational payments and NFC support on UPI have also been proposed to make transactions more seamless.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das in a press conference today announced a couple of major changes coming to offline UPI payments and more. UPI Lite transactions limit has been proposed to be increased from Rs. 200 to Rs. 500 in offline mode. However, the overall wallet limit is retained at Rs. 2,000 only. The functionality was announced in September 2022, and it currently allows users to make offline payments of up to Rs. 200 only.

Additionally, RBI also proposed to enable “Conversational Payments” on UPI by using AI-powered systems. Users will soon be able to ask an AI-powered system to make payments. However, further details on this functionality haven't been disclosed yet. The feature will initially be available in Hindi and English and will be made available in more Indian languages soon.

Furthermore, the RBI also announced to introduce offline payments on UPI using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology through the ‘UPI-Lite' on-device wallet. This will help users to make payments via UPI in an internet-restricted area or low network area.

Last month, Google Pay introduced new UPI Lite services on its platform. Transactions made via the UPI Lite service on Google Pay will not require the UPI PIN and can be done with a single tap. Notably, UPI Lite doesn't rely on real-time bank transactions and hence, can be accessed in offline mode as well.