Business Desk: India’s digital payments platform the Unified Payment Interface – UPI – is set to see some significant changes. The National Payments Corporation of India – NPCI – that operates retail payment systems like the UPI is about to eliminate all the pull-based payments methods feature form all UPI applications, through which users or merchants can request money from other users.
According to reports from leading media organizations, the NCPI is set to remove this feature from UPI platforms like Google Pay or PhonePe due to the growing incidents and fear of fraud and misleading scams. The NCPI is likely to limit the usage of this feature within verified merchants and restrict the amount of person-to-person payment requests only to a certain amount.
Alternatively, NCPI has also announced that if a mobile number linked to the bank accounts and the UPI platforms has not been active for a long time it would be removed form the bank accounts, therefore disabling the UPI accounts itself.
UPI, which is a recent and an indigenous fintech innovation in India has transformed its economy by facilitating fast, secure, cashless, and contactless payment system. It became massively popular particularly during and after the pandemic when contactless payments became the norm around the world.
The forthcoming changes in UPI can be regarded as a positive step towards making contactless and online payments through various UPI platforms secure and safe, in a country where financial fraud is a pressing problem, especially among the elderly and digitally inexperienced. Therefore, people should maintin extra caution when using these platforms and not respond to any unknown payment requests and click on sucpicious links. After all, “scan and pay” should never become “scam to pay.”
Sources: Times of India, Hindustan Times
Also read: Arab Nations Invest Heavily in Wealthy Sports Leagues, Including New Saudi Cricket League
Also read: GPT4.5, the first AI model that feels like taking to a thoughtful person
Also Read: Skype to shut down after years of connecting people worldwide
Also Read: Starlink launches its first in-flight WiFi on airBaltic, set to transform air travel experience
Also Read: Is Grok 3 the most advanced AI chatbot ever?
Also read: The AI deepfake crisis should be crushed early, UK to criminalize deepfakes