Introduced by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) can be seen as a game-changer, revolutionizing the way digital transactions are conducted in India. Making UPI transactions more convenient, and to prevent the inadvertent transfer of funds to unintended recipients, recently, NPCI issued UPI guidelines on deactivation of UPI IDs and UPI Number of inactive users.
“It has come to our attention that customers may change to a new mobile number without disassociating their previous number from the banking system. In accordance with the guidelines stipulated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), there exists the possibility of reallocation of the old mobile number to new user,” NPCI said in a circular.
Here are the guidelines that have been issued to the UPI ecosystem:
- All TPAPs and PSP banks shall identify UPI IDs and associated UPI numbers and phone numbers of customers who have not performed any financial (debit or credit) or non-financial transactions for a time period of 1 year from the UPI Apps.
- UPI IDs and UPI Numbers of such customers shall be disabled for inward credit transactions. Further to this, PSPs shall deregister the same phone number from UPI mapper as well.
- Customers with inward credit block UPI IDs and phone numbers shall re-register in their respective UPI apps for UPI mapper linkage. Customers can make payments, non-financial transactions using UPI Pin as needed.
- UPI apps shall perform Requester Validation (ReqValAd) before initiating ‘pay-to-contact’/’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/cached at the app’s end.
NPCI has asked all the UPI apps including TPAPs and PSP banks to implement the guidelines by December 31, 2023.
