New Delhi, Dec 15 (IANS) India witnessed digital payment frauds worth Rs 805 crore via Unified Payments Interface (UPI), involving 10.64 lakh incidents, till November this fiscal (FY26), which has gone up compared to previous fiscals as the UPI adoption rises, the Parliament was informed on Monday.

In FY 2024-25, the country saw UPI-related frauds at Rs 981 crore (involving 12.64 lakh incidents) and in FY 2023-24, such frauds resulted in the loss of Rs 1,087 crore (13.42 lakh incidents), Union Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, told the Lok Sabha.

“With increasing digital payment transactions in the country, incidences of fraudulent practices, including digital payment frauds and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) frauds, have also gone up in the last few years,” he noted.

The FY 2022-23 saw UPI-related frauds at Rs 573 crore, up from Rs 242 crore in FY 2021-22.

In order to prevent payment-related frauds, including UPI transaction frauds, various initiatives have been taken up by the government, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) from time to time.

These include device binding between the customer’s mobile number and the device, two-factor authentication through PIN, daily transaction limit, limits and curbs on use cases, said the minister.

Additionally, the NPCI provides a fraud monitoring solution to all the banks to generate alerts and decline transactions by using AI/ML-based models. RBI and banks have also been taking up awareness campaigns through short SMS, radio campaigns, publicity on the prevention of ‘cyber-crime’, etc.

Further, to facilitate the citizens to report any cyber incident,s including financial frauds, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has launched a National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (www.cybercrime.gov.in) as well as a National Cybercrime Helpline Number ‘1930’.

Moreover, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) and ‘Chakshu’ facility, which enables citizens to report suspected fraud communications received over call, SMS, or WhatsApp, said the minister.

The UPI saw 32 per cent transaction count growth (year-on-year) at 20.47 billion in the month of November — along with registering 22 per cent annual growth in transaction amount at Rs 26.32 lakh crore, according to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data.

–IANS

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