The National Payments Corporation of India (“NPCI”) has issued a Circular mandating technical specifications for transaction IDs of UPIs. To standardize this, NPCI has instructed Payment System Operators (“PSPs”) to:
1. Use transaction IDs of 35 characters (alphanumeric) exclusively.
2. Implement a validation of field length in the central system to reject transaction IDs that do not comply with the specifications. (The effective date for this mandate is yet to be notified by the NPCI)
Further the liability in the event of duplicate transactions processed by the central system, leading to settlement issues, has been shifted to the originating entity of the transaction ID, and the PSP will be debited.
Background:
UPI technical specifications dictate that transaction IDs must be 35 characters long (alphanumeric). However, NPCI has observed the following discrepancies:
1. PSPs are using transaction IDs of varying len gths, ranging from 4 to 35 characters, which deviates from UPI technical specifications.
2. Duplicate transaction IDs are being generated by PSPs during transaction origination.
3. In central systems housing multiple databases, some transactions with duplicate IDs are being processed online but are rejected in the back office, causing settlement issues and customer dissatisfaction.
In response to these issues, NPCI has mandated the above measures to standardize the technical specifications for UPI transaction IDs and increase customer satisfaction.
A copy of the circular has been linked below for ease of reference.
Source: National Payments Corporation Of India
