New Delhi, December 15 (IANS). In India, till November of the current financial year 2026, fraud worth Rs 805 crore has been committed through Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which involves 10.64 lakh incidents. This number has increased compared to previous financial years, as the use of UPI is increasing. Union Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary gave this information in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
UPI-related fraud cases worth Rs 981 crore were reported in the financial year 2024-25, which included 12.64 lakh incidents, while in 2023-24 the figure was Rs 1,087 crore, involving 13.42 lakh incidents.
The minister said that with the increase in digital payment transactions in the country, incidents of fraud have also increased.
In the financial year 2022-23, there was a fraud related to UPI of Rs 573 crore, which was much higher than in 2021-22, when this figure was Rs 242 crore. This growth is due to the increasing use of digital payments.
The government, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) have taken several steps to prevent UPI fraud. These include device binding between the customer’s mobile number and device, two-step verification via PIN, daily transaction limits and limits on certain use cases.
NPCI provides a solution to all banks for fraud monitoring, which uses AI/ML based models to generate alerts and reject suspicious transactions. Along with this, RBI and banks have launched awareness campaigns for prevention of cyber crime, which include SMS, radio campaigns and publicity.
Further, to help all citizens report cyber crimes, including financial fraud, the Ministry of Home Affairs has launched a National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and cyber crime helpline number ‘1930’.
On the other hand, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) and ‘Chakshu’ facility, which helps citizens report suspected fraudulent messages received on calls, SMS or WhatsApp, the Union Minister said.
According to NPCI data, the use of UPI is increasing rapidly. The number of UPI transactions registered an increase of 32 percent in the month of November, reaching 20.47 billion. Moreover, the value of transactions increased by 22 percent, reaching Rs 26.32 lakh crore.
–IANS
Durgesh Bahadur/ABS
