If you possess a UPI (Unified Payments Interface) account through popular apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, or Paytm and haven’t utilized it for a year or more due to any reason, it is slated to be deactivated starting January 1. This action is in response to a circular issued by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) on November 7, 2023.
The decision is attributed to the inadvertent transfer of money in cases where users change their mobile numbers without updating their information in the banking system, leading to the potential issuance of the previous number to a new user.
In essence, if a phone number linked to a UPI app becomes non-operational, it will be deactivated from the payments app to prevent misuse. The deactivation process will be carried out by third-party application providers (TPAP) and Payment Service Providers (PSP).
They will identify UPI IDs and associated UPI numbers and phone numbers of customers who haven’t engaged in any transactions for one year from their UPI ID. Subsequently, the UPI IDs and UPI numbers of these customers will be disabled for inward credit transactions. Payment service providers will then deregister the phone number from the UPI mapper.
All UPI apps, including Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe, are expected to implement this by December 31, 2023. However, affected customers have the option to re-register their UPI apps for mapper linkage, enabling them to conduct payments and non-financial transactions using their UPI PIN.
The NPCI’s November 7 circular emphasizes that UPI apps must perform requester validation before initiating pay-to-contact or pay-to-mobile number transactions. This includes displaying the customer’s name fetched before the transaction and not showing the name stored or cached at the app’s end. The NPCI has instructed the implementation of these measures by the year-end, December 31, 2023.
