NPCI to stop UPI person-to-person 'collect requests' from October to combat fraud

NPCI stops all P2P collect requests

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs the popular Unified Payments Interface (UPI), has asked banks and payment apps to stop all peer-to-peer (P2P ) "collect requests" from October 1, as it looks to combat financial fraud.

The "collect request" or "pull transaction" feature allows a user to request money from another subscriber through UPI, a facility often misused by fraudsters to trick users into authorising payments.

“It is hereby informed that by October 1, 2025, UPI P2P Collect shall not be allowed to be processed in UPI,” NPIC said in circular issued on July 29.

At present, the maximum amount a UPI user can “collect” from another person per transaction is Rs 2,000. The number of successful P2P credit transactions is capped at 50 a day.

Merchants can still continue with collect requests. For instance, when a user is trying to make a UPI payment on Flipkart, Amazon, Swiggy or IRCTC apps, these merchants send a collect request to the customer’s app. The request is processed after the user approves and enters the UPI PIN.

While “collect request” frauds were regular in the early days of UPI, these have come down dramatically after NPCI limited the value to around Rs 2,000.

The circular said all member banks and UPI apps shall not initiate, route or process UPI P2P transactions. The Economic Times was the first to report the development.

The collect feature was designed for users to send a reminder to friends or relatives who owe them money without having to send a separate message. Another use case was a group of people going out together and the person paying the bill sending a collect request to the others. UPI now has a split payment option.

In earlier days, small shopkeepers were using personal savings bank accounts for trade transactions and they could send collect request to their customers for pending payments. Now, banks and UPI apps designate such UPI accounts as merchant transactions.

UPI is the country’s most popular digital payments method with the platform processing close to 20 billion transactions a month worth around Rs 25 lakh crore. There are an estimated 40 crore unique UPI users in the country.