The digital payment landscape has grown by leaps and bounds in India. Not just the traditional online payment methods like RTGS/ NEFT/ECS, newer entrants like Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Wallet services and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) are the new digital rulers. In recent times, UPI has emerged as one of the most preferred payment modes.

With the evolution of the payment ecosystem and UPI clocking 1.3 billion transactions in January 2020, it has become necessary for players to enhance user experience and provide them with easy payment options.

Experts say ease of using the payment interface has simplified digital payments, due to which UPI has gained acceptance amongst such large customers. Having said that, it is also being exploited by fraudsters and scammers to defraud users. These fraudsters take advantage of the ignorance and lack of knowledge of customers on the usage of such new platforms. Every day many people still fall prey to such scams and lose a lot of money. Hence, while using such a payment interface, one needs to be cautious about sharing any kind of banking/finance related details while interacting with an unknown person or any unsolicited call as most of those are a fraudster.

To stay safe from scamsters and fraudsters, here are some banking tips to keep in mind:

Unverified Apps: Stay away from installing unverified apps. People nowadays just download any and every app, this is because, with the easy availability of internet connection and smartphones, people keep downloading apps, not knowing their authentication. Once such apps are installed, they take control of the mobile. Examples of popular fraud apps are AnyDesk, Team-Viewer, etc.

Link for making any payment: Do not click on any given link to make a payment. This is another form of frauding people. For instance, if you are selling something through websites like OLX or Quickr, do not agree to accept payment by clicking on a link. Seeing your advertisement, a buyer contacts you and asks you to ‘accept’ his/her payment by clicking on the link that they sent you, if you do so, you will receive debit notification’s from your bank.

Sharing OTP: Most frauds happen by sharing the OTP. Even though now people know that they should not share their OTP, fraudsters ask gullible users to share the OTP. Things that are said under the guise are “mistakenly sent to you” or pretending to bank agents or to render a service that the customer might be seeking. Sharing OTP means anyone will be able to able to siphon off money from your account.