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Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday announced that it has expanded the limit for UPI Lite wallet additions and UPI LIte transactions. The central bank has raised the UPI Lite transaction limit to Rs 1,000  from Rs 500 earlier. The UPI Lite wallet limit has been raised to Rs 5,000 from Rs 2,000 earlier, according to the notification. UPI Lite allows users to make online payments using their mobile phones even in areas with low and no network connectivity.

The Reserve Bank of India had announced these changes during its monetary policy announcement in October.

How does UPI Lite work

UPI Lite is enabled in most UPI apps in India. The user may choose the UPI Lite option on their preferred app. This allows the user to add an amount to a wallet on their phone which is housed in their preferred app. This wallet amount can be used even when there is low or poor Internet connectivity. This implies that users can even make UPI payments when their app is unable to connect to their bank account in real time. These wallet-based transactions do not require additional factor authentication. However, this also means that users do not receive real-time transaction alerts.

UPI Lite X, a variant of UPI Lite allows users to make payments even in absence of Internet connectivity. There is no need for Internet connectivity for the payer and payee under UPI X, according to the NPCI. As stated earlier, UPI Lite transactions do not find mention in the bank passbook.

Difference between UPI Lite and E-rupee

UPI Lite is different from e-rupee. E-rupee is the online legal tender issued by the RBI for direct payments. Unlike UPI, which utilises bank-to-bank payments, e-rupee is stored in a wallet on the phone which is bank-specific. E-rupee apps are different from UPI apps. However, the central bank has developed interoperability for e-rupee payments using QR codes.