Abstract

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) as a solution to the problems created as a result of demonetization in India in the year 2016. UPI emerged as a simple, easy to operate, and cost effective solution for retail payments and settlements in India. Apart from banks, NPCI also permitted third party technology companies to provide payments services using the UPI platform developed by it. The demonetization in 2016 made people opts for cashless transactions and Covid-19 made these transactions highly popular across the country. UPI played an active and instrumental role in the retail payments and settlements processes in India. Despite the growing importance of UPI based payments and settlements, there has been concern over the growing number of frauds related to UPI. Though UPI is considered technically competent, lack of awareness and exposure in using the payment platforms has been creating problems for the users, with fraudsters taking them for a ride. With cashless transactions poised to grow exponentially, UPI needs to act quickly to reduce the chances of fraud occurring.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the role of UPI in payments and settlement systems
• Understand the reasons for the increasing number of UPI frauds
• Gain awareness on UPI frauds
• Understand the role of NPCI in controlling the UPI frauds

Keywords

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI); Unified Payments Interface (UPI); Google Pay; Phone Pe; BHIM; UPI ID; UPI PIN; UPI Frauds; QR Codes