Pension regulator PFRDA has added more convenience to subscribers of the National Pension System (NPS) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY), enabling voluntary contributions through the popular Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time payment system.

Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has now launched an UPI handle for depositing contributions through D-Remit for the benefit of subscribers. Currently, the subscribers deposit their voluntary contributions under D-Remit into Tier I/II from the net banking account using IMPS/NEFT/RTGS. 

“Now, the contributions through UPI is enabled to further ease the process of depositing contributions. The UPI handle for the D Remit is PFRDA.15digitVirtualAccount@axisbank”, said a circular issued by PFRDA. 

The pension assets under management overseen by the PFRDA is currently about ₹7.8 lakh crore. The pension assets are growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 27-30 per cent. 

NPS, which was introduced in 2003, is mandatory for central government employees (except armed forces) who joined service from January 1, 2004.  In May 2009, this scheme was extended to private and unorganised sector on a voluntary basis.