National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has released guidelines to deactivate inactive Unified Payments Interface (UPI) IDs and associated UPI numbers in order to secure the UPI ecosystem and prevent wrong transfer of funds. 

NPCI has said this in a release, coinciding with an announcement by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that UPI transactions had crossed 11 billion. 

The UPI, a revolutionary platform enabling swift and convenient fund transfers between bank accounts via smartphones, has witnessed a remarkable surge, with a billion transactions added within a mere two months, taking the total transactions to an unprecedented 11 billion. But this burgeoning user base has now prompted the NPCI to issue the following directives. 

All banks, third-party apps, such as PhonePe and Google Pay will deactivate and shut down inactive UPI IDs. NPCI has allotted time till December 31, 2023, for this. Thus, users must activate their UPI ID before this date to avoid cancellation of their dormant UPI IDs. Meanwhile, before deactivating the users UPI ID, the bank will give a notification to the users through email or message. 

NPCI has said in its directive: “It has come to our attention that customers may change to a new mobile number without disassociating their previous number from the banking system. In accordance with the guidelines stipulated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), there exists the possibility of reallocation of the old mobile number to new user.” 

NPCI’s directive requires all banks and third-party apps to embark on the deactivation of dormant UPI IDs. The focus rests on IDs that have remained inactive, and devoid of any transactions for a period extending to one year. These inactive accounts will have their ability to receive money (inward credit transactions) turned off. Additionally, the phone number linked to these accounts will be removed from the UPI system, the NPCI’s release has said.