Starting October 1, 2025, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will permanently stop a UPI feature called peer-to-peer (P2P) ‘collect requests’. This is being done to reduce financial fraud and make online payments safer.
What is changing?
Currently, the ‘collect request’ feature allows someone to send you a payment request, and you can approve it to transfer money. From October 1, banks and UPI apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm will no longer allow such requests.
Why this decision?
- Fraudsters often use fake ‘collect requests’ to trick people into sending money.
- Even though NPCI limited such requests to ₹2,000 per transaction and a daily limit of 50 transactions in 2019, fraud cases continued.
- Removing this feature means all P2P payments will now be ‘push transactions’, where the sender starts the payment by scanning a QR code or entering details.
What experts say
- Rahul Jain, CFO of NTT DATA Payment Services India, said this will make UPI faster, safer, and more reliable because the payer will have full control over their payments.
- Reeju Datta, co-founder of Cashfree Payments, said this move closes a loophole that scammers exploited and strengthens trust in digital payments.
After October 1, 2025, you won’t get payment requests through UPI. You’ll always have to start the payment yourself, making transactions safer.
