MUMBAI, October 3 — The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Saturday officially operationalized 'UPI Circle'—a delegated payments feature on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) designed to empower secondary users without independent bank accounts to execute supervised digital retail payments.
According to the regulatory circular issued to member payment service providers, the UPI Circle mechanism enables a primary bank account holder to link trusted secondary users (such as dependent children, elderly parents, or domestic staff) through their native UPI application. The operational architecture supports two delegated authorization models: 'Full Delegation', wherein the secondary user independently executes merchant and peer-to-peer transactions within a primary-mandated monthly spending cap (restricted up to ₹15,000 per month); and 'Partial Delegation', where transactions initiated by the secondary user require real-time biometric or UPI-PIN authorization by the primary user.
NPCI executives highlighted that UPI Circle addresses a critical demographic gap in financial inclusion, allowing non-banked dependents across tier-2 and tier-3 households to participate in formal digital micropayments while preserving parental and financial oversight.
The statutory foundation of the National Payments Corporation of India (incorporated under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007 as a specialized umbrella organisation initiated by the RBI and IBA), evolutionary features of UPI (including UPI 123Pay for feature phones, UPI Lite, and UPI Circle), two-factor authentication (2FA) security protocols, and digital payment velocity metrics are essential topics across UPSC Civil Services (GS-III: Banking, Science & Technology) and RBI Grade B recruitment exams.