PRAN Card Holders Alert! PFRDA Revises CRA Service Charges for NPS and UPS Subscribers from October 1, 2025

PRAN Card Holders Alert! PFRDA Revises CRA Service Charges for NPS and UPS Subscribers from October 1, 2025

New Delhi: Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has issued revised guidelines on the service charges of Central Recordkeeping Agencies (CRAs) for subscribers of the National Pension System (NPS), Unified Pension Scheme (UPS), NPS-Lite, and Atal Pension Yojana (APY). The revised charges will take effect from October 1, 2025 onwards.

According to the circular vide memo no: PFRDA/2025/06/REG-CRA/01 dated September 15, 2025, the new structure follows the price discovery mechanism under the CRA Regulations, 2015. The charges have been rationalised across Government, Private, and Lite sector subscribers.

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For NPS and UPS subscribers in the government sector, the PRAN opening charge has been capped at ₹18 for an e-PRAN kit and ₹40 for a physical PRAN card. The annual maintenance charge has been set at ₹100 per account, while no transaction charges will apply. Accounts with a nil balance will not attract any annual maintenance charges.

In the APY and NPS-Lite category, the PRAN opening fee is fixed at ₹15, with an annual maintenance charge of ₹15 and no transaction charges.

For private sector subscribers under NPS and the newly introduced NPS Vatsalya, the PRAN opening charge is the same as the government sector. Annual maintenance charges, however, are linked to account corpus slabs — ranging from nil for accounts with no balance, ₹100 for corpus up to ₹2 lakh, and progressively rising to ₹500 for accounts above ₹50 lakh.

The PFRDA has clarified that the notified charges are upper caps, and CRAs are free to lower them through negotiations with subscribers or employers, provided they do not fall below the immediately preceding slab.

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Additionally, the charges for UPS subscribers in the government sector are applicable only during the accumulation phase. Rates for the payout or decumulation phase will be issued separately at a later date.

The revised framework replaces the earlier guidelines issued on June 15, 2020. All CRAs have been instructed to display the new charge structure prominently on their official websites and mobile applications.