India, Jan. 30 -- Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transaction IDs will no longer be allowed to contain special characters from February 1, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced. Any transactions with such special characters will be automatically rejected by the central system.

The announcement was made to standardise the process of generating UPI transaction IDs. The NPCI also urged all payment service providers to ensure compliance.

In a January 9 circular, the NPCI instructed all payment companies to use only alphanumeric characters for transaction IDs.

"Reference may be taken from our OC 193 dated March 28, 2024, wherein UPI ecosystem players were advised to used only alphanumeric characters for generating UPI...