New Delhi: The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has decided to close the facility of requesting money through payment apps to deal with financial fraud.
The facility of ‘collection’ i.e. payment request between persons (P2P) through UPI from banks and payment apps will be closed from October 1, 2025. Earlier, NPCI had said in a circular issued on July 29 that the process of P2P ‘collection’ will not be allowed in UPI from October 1, 2025.
P2P Collection in UPI means that the facility of ‘collection’ requests from banks and payment apps will be completely removed from the said date. The P2P feature is used to send requests for money to other UPI app users. It reminds them to share the amount. However, this feature is being used by fraudsters to cheat UPI users.
What is the purpose of NPCI?
NPCI said that all member banks, payment service providers (PSPs) and UPI apps are directed to make necessary changes in their systems and operational procedures to ensure that no P2P ‘collection’ transactions are initiated or processed on UPI after October 1, 2025. This decision means that all member banks and UPI apps (PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm etc.) will not be able to process P2P collection transactions after this deadline.
What is the current arrangement
Under P2P collection, currently a maximum of Rs 2,000 can be collected from an individual per transaction. Also, the limit of successful transactions is 50 per day. This means that currently a transaction of Rs 1 lakh is allowed in a day under this facility. Rahul Jain, Chief Financial Officer, NTT Data Payment Services India, said that by removing this facility, UPI (Unified Payment Interface) has strengthened its position as a fast and easy, secure and reliable platform.
What will be the new change?
NPCI had set a transaction limit of Rs 2,000 in the year 2019, but fraud continued. This step will act as a security measure for the users and now such fraud will be prevented. Under this change, a measure will be taken to reduce fraud by removing the high-risk channel. Now all P2P transactions will be initiated by the users for which the users will have to scan the ‘QR code’. He said that in this situation the users will have full control over their transactions.
