UPI ID VALIDATOR
The full ID including the @ sign — for example yourname@okaxis. You can paste it straight from your bank app.
Tap a handle to try the validator:
UPI stands for Unified Payments Interface. It is India's payment system that lets two bank accounts talk to each other instantly, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, using nothing more than an address. That address is your UPI ID, officially called a Virtual Payment Address or VPA. It is what you share with a shopkeeper or a friend, and it is what they type to send you money.
The two parts of a UPI ID
Every UPI ID splits at the @ sign into a name part and a handle part, and both halves matter.
| Part | Example | Who decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Name (before @) | yourname | You choose it, within your bank's rules |
| Handle (after @) | okaxis | Your bank or app assigns it — you cannot pick it |
This is the single most important thing to understand: the handle belongs to the bank, not to you. You can change the part before the @ as often as you like, but the part after it is fixed by whoever holds your account. That is why two people with the same name but different banks have completely different handles, and why guessing a handle is impossible.
The common handles and who they belong to
Almost every major bank follows a naming pattern. These are the handles you will meet most often:
| Handle | Bank or app |
|---|---|
@oksbi | State Bank of India |
@okhdfcbank | HDFC Bank |
@okicici | ICICI Bank |
@okaxis | Axis Bank |
@okkotak | Kotak Mahindra Bank |
@okind | IndusInd Bank |
@okbob | Bank of Baroda |
@okpnj | Punjab National Bank |
@okcanr | Canara Bank |
@okubn | Union Bank of India |
@paytm | Paytm Payments Bank |
@ybl / @ypay | PhonePe |
The tool above reads the handle for you. Type any UPI ID and it names the bank behind it.
What this validator can and cannot tell you
Being clear about this matters, because it is where most online validators are misleading. This tool checks two things:
- Format. Is there an @ sign? Is the name part legal? Is the handle shaped like a real UPI handle? A format error is the most common reason a payment simply never goes through.
- Bank identity. Which bank or app does this handle belong to, and how widely does that bank support UPI, IMPS, NEFT and RTGS across its branches.
And this is what it cannot tell you:
- Whether the account exists. That information lives inside the bank. No website can read it, and any site claiming it can is either guessing or trying to harvest the VPA you paste into it.
- Whose name is on the account. A VPA does not expose the account holder's name to the public.
For a real existence check, open your own UPI app and use its own Verify Payee or Check VPA feature. That check happens inside the bank, so it is accurate, and it is also the safe place to do it.
The rules a valid UPI ID follows
- Exactly one @ sign. Two @ signs means the whole thing is malformed and the payment will be rejected before it leaves.
- Name part: 1 to 256 characters. Letters, digits, dots, underscores and hyphens are allowed. Spaces are not.
- Handle part: 2 to 64 characters. It must start with a letter and contain only lowercase letters, digits and hyphens.
- Handle is assigned, not chosen. Whatever your bank gave you is the only handle that will work for your account.
- Case is best kept identical. Most banks are forgiving, but matching your app exactly removes all doubt.
Why UPI IDs fail in practice
Even a perfectly formatted VPA can fail at the moment of payment. The usual reasons, in order of how often they happen:
- Typing an IFSC instead. An IFSC is eleven characters of letters and digits; a VPA must contain an @. They are never interchangeable.
- Wrong handle. People carry handles across banks — someone sends money to @okaxis but the account is actually HDFC. The name part matching is not enough.
- Daily limit reached. The standard cap is one lakh rupees a day for most banks, and merchant payments often have a much lower cap such as ten thousand.
- Dormant or closed account. If the receiving account has been dormant, the payment will bounce even though the VPA looks perfect.
- Bank outage. UPI works twenty-four hours, but individual banks still have maintenance windows. Retrying after fifteen minutes usually works.
- Requesting an amount too small. Many merchants set a minimum. This is a merchant-side rule, not a bank one.
Safety when sharing a UPI ID
A UPI ID alone is low risk to share — that is the whole point of it. But two habits keep it safer still. First, never approve a collect request for a payment you did not initiate yourself; that is the single most common fraud in the country. Second, do not enter your VPA into websites you do not recognise, especially ones that ask for an OTP. No legitimate tool needs an OTP to check a format. If a site asks for your UPI PIN or an OTP to "verify" a VPA, close it. This tool never asks for either, and it stores nothing you type.
UPI versus NEFT, RTGS and IMPS
UPI is not the only way to move money, and knowing when each one applies saves time:
| UPI | IMPS | NEFT / RTGS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Needs | VPA | Account + IFSC | Account + IFSC |
| Speed | Instant | Instant | NEFT hours, RTGS instant |
| Typical ceiling | ₹1 lakh | ₹5 lakh | NEFT ₹5 lakh, RTGS higher |
| Best for | Everyday payments | 24×7 larger transfers | Large business payments |
Our IFSC Code Finder will tell you whether a particular branch supports UPI, IMPS, NEFT and RTGS, which is useful when you are standing at a counter and the cashier asks how you want to send the money.
Nothing you type into this tool is stored, logged or transmitted to any third party. The check runs entirely in your browser, and the bank identification uses public branch data only. This tool never asks for your UPI PIN, your OTP or your account number, and it will never need them. If any website asks for those in exchange for checking a UPI ID, it is a scam — close it immediately and never share an OTP with anyone, including someone claiming to be from your bank.