The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has mandated that all payment applications deactivate UPI IDs that have been inactive for over a year by December 31.

What to know? According to a report by Business Today, this directive is a precautionary measure to prevent accidental fund transfers, especially in cases where customers change their mobile numbers but fail to update their linked bank accounts.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) allows telecom companies to reassign deactivated numbers to new users after 90 days. This policy could cause unintended financial transactions if customers do not update old numbers linked to bank accounts. Therefore, Third Party App Providers (TPAP) and Payment Service Providers (PSP) must comply with this directive by the end of the year.

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The dotted line: Users of UPI applications like Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, and others should ensure their UPI IDs have been active within the last year. They should also check that all phone numbers linked to their UPI IDs have not been inactive for more than three months.

NPCI’s circular instructs TPAPs and PSP banks to identify UPI IDs and associated phone numbers that have remained unused for any financial or non-financial transactions through UPI apps for a year. They will deactivate these IDs and numbers for receiving funds and remove the phone numbers from the UPI mapper.

Customers with deactivated UPI IDs and numbers will need to re-register in their UPI apps to reactivate their accounts. However, they can still make payments and non-financial transactions using their UPI PIN.

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