From August 1, NPCI bans UPI payments within same account

In a bid to curb fake and artificial payments made to receive cashbacks, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has decided to ban all payments within the same account from its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform.

Starting August 1, all such payments will be blocked by the payment regulator, according to a circular issued to banks.

Here's more.

In context: NPCI cracks down on fake, unnecessary UPI-based transactions
23 Jul 2018
From August 1, NPCI bans UPI payments within same account
In a bid to curb fake and artificial payments made to receive cashbacks, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has decided to ban all payments within the same account from its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform.

Starting August 1, all such payments will be blocked by the payment regulator, according to a circular issued to banks.

Here's more.

An excerpt from the NPCI's circular
"While analyzing the transaction patterns we have observed instances wherein both credit and debit accounts are same...customers are sending money from their account to the same account...these transactions do not serve any use case and also add unnecessary load on the system," read the circular.

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What prompted the NPCI to ban same account transfers
Details
What prompted the NPCI to ban same account transfers
First reported by the Economic Times, the NPCI imposed the ban after observing three types of rather fake transactions.

Namely, these include transactions between the same UPI accounts, payments made from a UPI ID to a bank account registered to the same UPI ID, and transactions between different UPI IDs connected to the same bank account.

Cashbacks
Cashback-greedy consumers are opting for multiple, unnecessary transactions
The primary reason for banning such transactions is the rising number of fake or artificial transactions being made by customers greedy for cashbacks.

With several apps within the UPI ecosystem offering myriad cashback offers, consumers are reportedly resorting to multiple and unnecessary transactions in a bid to avail such offers.

The NPCI has also instructed banks to block such transactions from their end