The National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) is working on a feature to reduce issues related to timedout and declined Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions. The feature will enable real time settlement of such issues.

With this feature, banks shall be ready to take action in less than 30 seconds, while it currently takes more than 24 hours to unblock funds caught because of failed UPI transactions, ET reported citing sources.

“The NPCI is working on a system that will allow banks to know if the money debited has been credited to the receiver or not; all this can be done in less than 30 seconds and the money can be reversed,” the report quoted a source.

In case of failed transactions, the current process is to wait for account statements from counterpart banks to release block funds, if proven the user is wrong. The process usually takes around 24 hours.

Technical decline and business decline form two types of failed UPI transactions. While bank or NPCI system related issues cause technical decline, business declines are caused due to customer related issues such as passcode entry or transactions crossed stipulated limits.

The two largest remitter networks on UPI- the State Bank Of India (SBI) saw 5.06% technical decline rates, as compared to 0.08% of HDFC Bank. On the other hand, SBI saw 6.96% business decline rates and HDFC saw 5.48%. 

In July, UPI transactions crossed the 6 Bn mark as the NCPI processed 628 Cr transactions worth INR 10.63 Lakh Cr during the month. The transaction count and volume saw a 4.8% and 7.7% month-on-month (MoM) growth, respectively. 

NPCI has been working on several features to increase UPI adoption. For example, as the Reserve Bank of India revealed plans to allow linking credit cards with UPI, NPCI is planning to operationalise linking of RuPay credit cards with UPI soon.