The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has asked payment apps such as Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe etc. and banks to deactivate the UPI IDs and numbers that have not been active for more than one year. The NPCI circular has been issued to all the members of UPI on November 7, 2023. The decision has been taken to prevent the inadvertent transfer of money to unintended recipients in case customers change their mobile number without disassociating their old number from the banking system, NPCI stated. There exists a possibility that that old mobile number can be issued to a new issuer.
As per the new guidelines, the following must be done by the Third Party App Provider (TPAP) and Payment Service Providers (PSP) and implement the same by December 31, 2023.
- All TPAPs and PSP banks shall identify UPI IDs and associated UPI numbers and phone numbers of the customers who have not performed any financial (debit or credit) or non-financial transactions for 1 year from the UPI apps.
- UPI IDs and UPI numbers of such customers shall be disabled for inward credit transactions. Further, PSPs shall deregister the same phone number from the UPI mapper as well.
- Customers with inward credit block UPI IDs and phone numbers shall re-register in their UPI apps for UPI mapper linkage. Costumes can make payments, and non-financial transactions using UPI Pin as needed.
- UPI apps shall perform Requester Validation (ReqValAd) before initiating ‘Pay-to-contact’ and ‘pay to mobile number’. UPI apps shall show the customer name which has been fetched before initiating the transaction and shall not display the name which has been stored at the apps end.
Also read: What is the transaction limit for RuPay credit cards on UPI?
A new initiative has been taken to ensure a safe and secure transactional experience. As per the NPCI circular, “In the realm of digital payments, it is essential for customers to regularly review and verify their information within the banking system to ensure a safe and secure transactional experience. However, it has come to our attention that customers may change to a new mobile number without disassociating the previous number from the banking system.”
