The Centre is likely to roll out a new Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation mobile app by March-end that would allow subscribers to withdraw provident fund money through UPI, two senior officials familiar with the matter told Moneycontrol.
The new EPFO app, which will differ from the UMANG app, will be linked to the subscriber’s bank account. It will also be linked to the BHIM app and other UPI apps.
"This will allow the EPFO subscribers to transfer the funds in EPFO to their respective bank accounts…and then the withdrawal could be done through the UPI," one of the officials said, requesting anonymity.
Currently, EPFO withdrawals can be done online through the UAN portal, but there is no facility for withdrawing funds via UPI.
According to the officials, the feature will be rolled out by the end of March, as the testing of the app has been completed. "The subscribers will be able to withdraw up to 75 percent of the EPFO balance in their bank accounts," the official said. There are currently about 300 million subscribers of the EPFO.
According to the rules, at least 25 percent of the EPF balance must remain in the subscriber's account. In other words, members can now withdraw up to 75 percent of their EPF corpus while maintaining the mandatory minimum balance.
In the event of a job loss, the remaining 25 percent can be withdrawn only after 12 months.
Sources say the total corpus of EPFO is close to Rs 26 lakh crore, and the total number of active subscribers, or contributing members, is around 7.5 crore.
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