NPCI to end P2P ‘collect’ requests on UPI from October amid fraud concerns
Originally designed for use cases like splitting bills or reminding friends to pay back shared expenses, it has increasingly become a security concern.
India’s National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will stop allowing person-to-person “collect” requests on its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) from Oct. 1, 2025.
In a notice to banks, payment apps, and payment service providers, NPCI said they must make the necessary system changes to ensure no such transactions are sent or received after that date.
“All member banks, Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and UPI Apps are hereby directed to implement the necessary changes in their systems and operational processes to ensure that no P2P Collect transaction is initiated, routed, or processed on UPI beyond 1st October 2025,” said Kunal Kalawatia, chief of products at NPCI.
The “collect” feature lets one user request money from another, with the payment going through once the recipient approves it. Originally designed for use cases like splitting bills or reminding friends to pay back shared expenses, it has increasingly become a security concern.
Fraudsters have misused this mechanism to trick users into approving unintended payments. Some scammers disguise requests to appear as legitimate incoming funds, prompting recipients to unwittingly send money.
UPI transactions in India hit a new record in July, with 19.47 billion payments processed, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The total transaction value stood at Rs 25.08 lakh crore, the second highest on record after May’s Rs 25.14 lakh crore.
The previous peak in volume was 18.67 billion in May, which eased to 18.39 billion in June, when the total value was Rs 24.03 lakh crore. NPCI’s data showed that July’s transaction value was up 21% from Rs 20.64 lakh crore in the same month last year and rose 4.3% from June.
UPI is already live in seven countries, including the UAE, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, France, and Mauritius. Its entry into France is a milestone because it is UPI's first step in Europe. This allows Indians travelling or living there to pay seamlessly without the usual hassles of foreign transactions.