UPI Payments Fraud and What to do if you are scammed?

As digital payments in India are increasing rapidly, the increased risk of fraud is also becoming prevalent in India.

There are a lot of scammer gangs who are constantly in search of a good victim whom they can scam for money.

UPI is one such avenue that is being used to scam people. RBI provides guidelines to protect yourself from any scam and also provides various measures using which you can help yourself if you have been scammed.

Here is the comprehensive guide on how to prevent UPI Payments Fraud and if you’ve been scammed then what to do next.

4 ways you can prevent UPI Fraud

To prevent any kind of UPI fraud, you’ll have to ensure that you understand how UPI payments work. Here are 6 ways using which you can prevent UPI fraud-

• Never share any OTP with anyone. Some scammers may pose as a bank executive and may ask for OTP on your phone. Never share the OTP pin otherwise your login credential might lose your UPI account
• Do not let any unauthorized person access your phone, most communication from the bank is done on your mobile phone so prevent anyone from using your smartphone
• The scammer might send you a pic of the QR code to transfer funds to your bank account but it is a scam. You do not have to scan any QR code if you were to receive payments.
• Do not initiate payment on the unofficial links. Before initiating any payments, you’ll have to make sure it is from the official business. Scammers might send you official-looking payment links to scam you.

What to do if you’ve been scammed using UPI Payments?

Even after a lot of prevention, let’s say you’ve been scammed. Now, what to do?

Well, in that case, you can follow these steps to recover your funds by reporting fraud payments to the relevant authorities-

Register a Complaint on the Payments Platform

First, you’ll have to file a complaint on the platform using which you’ve initiated the payments. Whether its Paytm or Phone pe, you’ll have to immediately raise the issue to the platform aggregator that you’ve been scammed.

The customer service executive will guide you further on how you can recover your payments, also, they can further blacklist the scammer’s number to prevent any further fraud.

Register a Complain on NPCI Portal

NPCI is the organization handling all the UPI payments. It has a portal for reporting such scams or even accidental transactions.

It is an online process which makes it convenient and fast for you to report. You can follow these steps to file a complaint in NPCI Portal-

• Visit the official website of the NPCI UPI Dispute Redressal Mechanism portal and select the nature of transaction from the drop down
• Now, select the type of issues that you are facing from the dropdown questions given
• After that, you’ll have to briefly describe what is the issue
• Now, enter the transaction can bank name, your VPA, amount, date, email, and phone number in the given field
• Now, you’ll have to attach the bank statement from your bank followed by clicking on the submit button
• Your UPI Dispute has been registered with the NPCI and you’ll also be provided with the complaint number which can be used to track complaints

Register a Complaint with Bank

You can also register a complain with your bank to further increase the chances of the recovery. If the bank account of the scammer is with the same bank, then you can report the bank account fraud transaction.

Banks provide online and offline complaint registration, you’ll have to find your bank’s complaint portal using Google. Alternatively, you can also call on the bank’s customer care or visit the bank branch to do so.

Register a Complaint with RBI

Reserve Bank of India is the central body that controls all the banks with guidelines and policies. You can raise a transaction dispute there as well.

RBI has ombudsman officer who handles these grievances. You can register a complain with RBI ombudsman from the official complaint portal of RBI.

You can also pay a visit to the ombudsman officer nearest to your location and file a complaint there as well.

Using all these measures, you can prevent as well as recover your funds. These are not bulletproof steps which guarantees success in removing funds but, it helps you in many ways also reporting the scammer will help in nabbing them.

If the involved amount is a lot then you should also lodge a FIR with the police describing the fraud that had happen.