New Delhi, Aug 13 (IANS) In order to address financial fraud, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has directed banks and payment apps to halt all peer-to-peer (P2P) “collect requests” from October 1.

But merchants can continue to submit collect requests. 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.

When a user attempts a UPI payment on Flipkart, Amazon, Swiggy, or IRCTC apps, these merchants send a collect request to the user’s application. The request is processed once the user approves and enters the UPI PIN.

“It is hereby informed that by October 1, 2025, UPI P2P Collect shall not be allowed to be processed in UPI,” NPIC said in a circular. All member banks and UPI apps are prohibited from initiating, routing, or processing UPI P2P transactions, it further said.

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

The collect feature allows users to remind friends or relatives about money owed without sending a separate message. In the past, small shopkeepers used personal savings accounts for trade transactions and could send collection requests to customers for pending payments. Banks and UPI apps now classify these accounts as merchant transactions.

UPI is the leading digital payments system in the country with approximately 400 million users. UPI transactions grew from 92 crore in FY 2017-18 to 18,587 crore in FY 2024-25, with a CAGR of 114 per cent. During the same period, the value of transactions has grown from Rs 1.10 lakh crore to Rs 261 lakh crore. In July 2025, UPI recorded over 1,946 crore transactions in a single month for the first time.

–IANS

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