Sebi proposes unique UPI address for payment collection to weed out unregistered entities
Jan 31, 2025
Synopsis
Sebi UPI: Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is considering creating a unique Unified Payments Interface (UPI) address to ensure the investor money reaches only to the SEBI registered intermediaries.
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is considering creating a unique Unified Payments Interface (UPI) address to ensure the investor money reaches only to the SEBI registered intermediaries. The above move is also expected to help investors identify, isolate and avoid unregistered entities with the latter not having access to this unique UPI handle.
The market watchdog has proposed to increase the upper limit of capital market transactions made through UPI to Rs 5 lakh per day from the current Rs 2 lakh limit.
On Friday, Sebi floated a a consultation paper seeking a public feedback on a host of issues including if the proposed mechanism of dedicated UPI Handle as a payment mode, along with the prescribed limits are adequate to cater to the majority of the investor base.
It has also asked if the proposed UPI handle i.e. @payright is appropriate and resonates well with the investors.
"There is a need to proactively restrict their proliferation and thereby enable investors to identify SEBI registered market intermediaries and make requisite payments to them in a more legitimate, convenient, and efficient way," the consultation paper said.
The window to send comments/suggestions will close on February 21, 2025.
UPI transaction limit
UPI is a retail product and has transaction limits of Rs 2 lakh per day set by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Each app and bank imposes its own limits
In order to evaluate that whether the current limits are sufficient or there is a need to increase the UPI limits for securities market transactions, an analysis of UPI transactions was carried out for the transactions made by the clients of top brokers.
Two approaches were considered viz.
1) Trends in fund transfer done by investors to their members
2) Trends in number of clients w.r.t fund transfer done during the day
In its analysis, Sebi found that, individual transactions below Rs 1 lakh account for 92.9% of total transactions, while transactions between Rs 1 lakh to less than Rs 2 lakh constitute 3.9%. The transactions between Rs 2 lakh to below 3 lakh constitute 1.3%. For total transactions during the day by an investor, these figures were 91.5T, 4.6% and 1.6%, respectively, the Sebi paper said.
[The Economic Times]
