EnKash launches India's first meal card with UPI payments

EnKash extends its UPI capabilities to meal card allowances, combining the convenience of UPI, the reach of RuPay, and tax-efficient employee benefits.

MUMBAI, India, July 22, 2026 — EnKash, India's leading business payments and spend management platform, today announced the launch of UPI-based payments on its Meal Card. With this addition, employees can make payments directly from their meal card balance by scanning eligible UPI QR codes at food and grocery merchants.

This makes EnKash the first provider in India to enable UPI payments directly from a meal benefit balance.

The new capability extends the UPI infrastructure that EnKash already offers across its Prepaid Payment Instrument portfolio. It brings the familiarity and convenience of UPI to structured meal benefits, allowing employees to use their meal allowance through a payment method that has become a part of everyday life in India.

The timing is also significant. Under the revised Income-tax reforms, eligible meal benefits of up to ₹200 per meal are available under both the old and new tax regimes, subject to prescribed conditions. Employees can receive up to ₹1,05,600 annually as a tax-free meal benefit. For HR teams, this makes meal benefits more inclusive, valuable and easier to offer across the workforce.

Key Features

The solution combines:

• UPI-based scan-and-pay convenience
• Largest acceptance infrastructure of RuPay
• Merchant category-based spending controls
• Physical and virtual meal cards
• Real-time transaction visibility
• Centralised card issuance, loading and management for employers

Employers can issue cards, load meal balances, set spending controls and track transactions through a centralised platform. Merchant category controls help ensure that the meal balance is used only for eligible expenses.

Executive Comment

"Employee benefits should be as seamless as everyday payments. By bringing UPI to meal benefits, we're enabling employees to pay the way they already do while helping employers deliver a simpler and more digital-first experience."

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— Priya Sharma, Head of Product at EnKash

"This launch brings together the power of RuPay, the familiarity of UPI and the tax efficiency of meal benefits. It also reflects the strength of the payments stack EnKash has already built across its PPI products."

Background

The UPI-enabled Meal Card is supported by EnKash's existing payments and prepaid infrastructure. The company already provides UPI-based payment capabilities across its prepaid products and also offers businesses a wider payments suite covering prepaid cards, employee benefits, expense management, petty cash, corporate payments, payment gateway, and rewards.

About EnKash

EnKash is India's first full-stack payments and spend management platform, empowering 5,000+ businesses to automate payments, expenses, and employee benefits. Holding PA, PPI, and Bharat Connect (BBPOU) licenses, EnKash offers a unified financial orchestration suite backed by $23M in funding. By partnering with leading banks and networks like NPCI and Visa, EnKash delivers secure, scalable solutions that make enterprise financial operations faster, smarter, and fully compliant.

For media inquiries, email: marketing@enkash.com

This is a company press release that is not part of editorial content. No journalist of The Hindu was involved in the publication of this release.

Published - July 22, 2026 09:30 am IST