Your parent needs to pay for groceries. Your teenager needs money for a school trip. Your domestic help has a phone but no bank account linked to UPI. Until recently, the answer to all three was the same: transfer money to them, then hope it is spent as intended.
UPI Circle changes that. It lets you authorise another person to spend from your bank account, within limits you set, without ever giving them your PIN or your app login. Here is how it works and where it makes sense.
What UPI Circle Is
UPI Circle is NPCI’s delegated payments feature. One person — the primary user — owns the bank account and the UPI PIN. They add a secondary user, who can then initiate payments that draw on the primary’s account.
Nothing about the primary’s credentials is shared. The secondary uses their own phone and their own app; they simply do not need a bank account of their own.
The Two Modes, and Why the Difference Matters
Full delegation
The primary sets a monthly spending cap. The secondary pays freely within it, using their own UPI PIN, with no approval needed per transaction. Good for a spouse or an adult family member you trust with a budget.
Partial delegation
The secondary initiates a payment; the primary gets a notification and must approve it with their PIN before it goes through. Nothing moves without a deliberate yes. This is the right mode for teenagers, elderly parents who are new to digital payments, and household staff.
Choose partial by default. You can always loosen it later; tightening after a problem is less pleasant.
Limits and Rules
- A primary user can add up to five secondary users.
- A secondary user can be linked to one primary at a time.
- Full delegation carries a monthly cap of up to ₹15,000 per secondary user.
- Partial delegation follows the primary’s normal per-transaction UPI limits, since the primary approves each payment.
- Every transaction appears in the primary’s statement and app history, tagged to the secondary who made it.
How this interacts with your overall daily cap is worth understanding — see our guide to UPI limits by bank.
How to Set It Up
As the primary user:
- Open a UPI app that supports Circle — BHIM, PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm have rolled it out progressively.
- Find UPI Circle or Family & Friends in the app menu.
- Add a secondary user by scanning their UPI QR code or entering their UPI ID.
- Pick full or partial delegation, and set the spending cap if you chose full.
- Authorise with your UPI PIN.
As the secondary user: accept the request in your app, then set your own UPI PIN for the delegated account. Payments then work exactly like normal UPI from your side.
Where It Genuinely Helps
- Teenagers. Partial delegation gives them the ability to pay without giving them an unsupervised account.
- Elderly parents. They pay at the shop; you approve from wherever you are. No cash handover, no shared PIN.
- Household staff. Groceries and errands without advancing cash or reimbursing later.
- Family members without a bank account. Around 200 million Indians still fall in this group, and Circle gives them real payment access.
- Small business. Letting an employee pay suppliers within a cap, without handing over the account. If this is your use case, our UPI for small business guide goes deeper.
Using It Safely
- Start with partial delegation. Move to full only once you have seen a month of spending you are comfortable with.
- Set the cap low. You can raise it in seconds; an unnoticed drain is harder to undo.
- Review transactions weekly. Everything is tagged by secondary user, so this takes a minute.
- Remove access the moment it is no longer needed — a departing employee, a completed trip.
- Only add people you would lend cash to. Circle is a trust mechanism, not a security mechanism.
One thing that has not changed: nobody legitimate ever asks for your UPI PIN, and Circle does not require you to share it. Any request to do so is fraud — the patterns are catalogued in our UPI fraud guide.
UPI Circle vs the Alternatives
Versus simply transferring money: Circle keeps the money in your account until it is spent, and gives you a per-transaction veto in partial mode. A transfer gives up both.
Versus UPI AutoPay: AutoPay handles recurring payments to a fixed merchant. Circle handles discretionary spending by a person. They solve different problems.
Versus a joint account: Circle is reversible in one tap and carries no legal co-ownership.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the secondary user need a bank account?
No. That is the central point of the feature.
Can the secondary user see my bank balance?
No. They see only what they are permitted to spend.
How many people can I add?
Up to five secondary users.
Can I remove someone instantly?
Yes, from the UPI Circle section of your app, with immediate effect.
Is UPI Circle free?
Yes. No charges for the primary or the secondary user.
The Bottom Line
UPI Circle is one of the more thoughtful additions to India’s payment stack — it solves the very ordinary problem of letting someone spend your money without handing over your account. Start with partial delegation, keep caps tight, review monthly, and it becomes invisible infrastructure for a household.
For the full landscape, see our complete UPI guide for 2026.
Fold Smith
Fold Smith is a technology journalist and the lead editor of The Techleez, an India-first publication that decodes technology, digital payments, streaming and online culture for everyday readers. From UPI and fintech explainers to OTT streaming guides, Android tips and online-safety checklists, he personally tests the apps, tools and services featured on the site before recommending them. His focus is practical, research-backed guidance that helps Indian readers make smarter digital decisions — spend less, stream better and stay safe online. When he is not writing, he is usually tracking NPCI circulars, first-day-first-show box office numbers, or the next big OTT premiere.
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