Payments Council launches common icon library for uniformity, fraud prevention

Representative image.

The Payments Council of India (PCI), the apex body of payments and settlement players in the country, has launched an initiative named ‘Project Pratima’ to standardise icons for payments across apps and platforms to make it easier for customers to identify digital payment icons.

Gaurav Chopra, Executive Director of PCI told Moneycontrol, “It is a project which PCI has undertaken to standardise icons of most common use cases in payments. The main idea behind this is to safeguard people against fraud and increase adoption of digital payments. Standardised icons will help users identify payments actions correctly.”

Pratima means 'icon' in Sanskrit. The project’s website says that it aims to improve the trust, security, and familiarity of digital payment icons in a bid to avoid instances of customers falling prey to fraud or making mistakes while conducting payment transactions.

PCI’s website for Project Pratima read, “different icons are being used across digital payment application operators and payment entities. This could be unclear for new users as well as the un-initiated, for adoption of digital payments. Project Pratima aims to introduce a uniform set of icons for basic payment actions and processes.”

Over the past year, as Unified Payment Interface (UPI) transactions have seen tremendous growth, instances of fraud have gone up too. According to latest data by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), 84,145 UPI fraud complaints were received in the second quarter 2022 i.e. the April to June quarter. The number of complaints rose by 346 percent from 18,864 complaints received in the second quarter of 2021.

The core group implementing the project consists of volunteer designers from fintech players FamPay, Setu, Jupiter, Amazon Pay, Safexpay and Paytm.

The working group includes members across banks and payments companies including design and user interface executives from HDFC Bank, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), State Bank of India (SBI), Visa, Whatsapp Pay, PayU, Eko, Mobikwik and Paytm.

“Some of our members volunteered to let their design teams join us in creating these icons that can then be used widely. We will soon share the details with all our members and banks requesting them to start using these new icons,” Chopra added.

PCI represents over 90 percent of non-bank companies in the payments ecosystem including companies that hold licenses to operate under Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPIs), payments banks, Payment Gateways, merchant aggregators, card networks, international remittance and trade providers, along with BBPOU and UPI providers.

The webpage for Project Pratima consists of an icon library with an option to download the standardised icons created by a core group of designers from across fintechs. While payments platforms can customise colours and background shapes of the icons, PCI has recommended certain dos and don’ts for its members.

For example, successful transactions must be displayed with a tick in a green circle, and failed transactions with a cross in a red circle to avoid any confusion for users.

Further, the website also lists design principles that dictate that icons must be recognizable even without labels, accessible on the screen, scalable and flexible to adapt to various brands.

The initiative to standardise icons is only the first phase of the project. In the second phase, PCI will work towards making payments easier for the visually impaired.

“We will undertake research to understand their issues and how we can make the experience better for them,” he said.