UPI frauds: Rising cases can affect users' confidence in digital payments

The volume of digital-payment transactions increased from 20.71 billion in 2017-18 to 187.37 billion in 2023-24 - at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44 per cent

Digital-payment transactions have demonstrated remarkable expansion over the past few years. However, unprecedented growth in this area in India has been accompanied by a surge in related frauds. The recent data shared by the Union Ministry of Finance before Parliament shows the monetary value of frauds related to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) rose to Rs 1,087 crore in 2023-24, an 89 per cent increase over the Rs 573 crore in 2022-23. Alarmingly, payment-fraud incidents also nearly doubled from 725,000 in 2022-23 to 1.34 million in 2023-24. In the first half of this financial year, India reported 632,000 cases of UPI