Mastering UPI Payments: Ensuring Safe and Secure Digital Transactions

UPI has reshaped digital transactions across the nation, with UPI scanners now ubiquitous, enabling online payments at retail stores, shopping malls, and street vendors, thereby propelling the thriving digital economy.

As of 2023, it has been found that nearly 83 billion UPI transactions take place every year. By 2027, it will skyrocket to 1 billion daily transactions. With UPI usage set to skyrocket, it is the responsibility of merchants to offer users a seamless and fraud-proof experience. In this blog, we discuss some proven strategies for UPI merchants to adopt.

10 UPI Payment Best Practices You Must Follow

Here are the top 10 UPI payment tips that will help you avoid scams and embrace digital transactions without any fear:

Always Use Secure Payment Gateways: First and foremost, make sure you always use secure and trusted payment gateways to facilitate transactions. While choosing a payment gateway, have a look at their past records, reviews, and reputation. Never choose a gateway simply because they charge less than the others. Worldline is one of the most reputable payment gateways in the country.

Security First: Ensure that your website and app are up-to-date all the time. Identify existing bugs and unveil security patches to fix them. Sometimes, hackers try to intercept the communication between your servers and the user's device. Implementing SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) can prevent that.

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Bypassing a single authentication layer is easy for scammers and hackers. But you can ramp up the security of your network by implementing 2FA for user logins and transactions. This is something cryptocurrency exchanges have already implemented. By asking users to input an OTP sent to their registered e-mail or number, you can easily validate the authenticity of a request.

Strict Password Policies: Passwords containing a user's contact number, date of birth and other common information are easy to guess and thus easier to break. You must encourage users to use a strong password. Provide suggestions such as ‘use a combination of alphanumeric and symbols.’

Make Transaction Monitoring A Habit: The best way to prevent a large-scale breach of complication is to monitor transactions on your network regularly. It helps you detect and flag suspicious activities on the network. Consider automating transaction monitoring to do all this in near time and make your network hack-proof.

Make KYC Mandatory: Implement a robust Know Your Customer (KYC) process to authenticate user identity. It will help you keep a check, if not entirely eliminate fraudulent transactions. Further, it will aid your efforts to adhere to regulatory guidelines.

Leverage Data Encryption: Online servers are always on the radar of hackers, who are in an endless pursuit of sensitive and valuable user data, including personal details and payment information. Thus, data encryption is a necessity. Invest in strong encryption methods to safeguard sensitive user data.

Conduct Security Audits: As robust security systems come to the fore, hackers continue to invent innovative ways to breach network security. You must conduct security audits of your systems and infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities and address them.

Seamless Customer Support and Query Resolution: Despite implementing multiple layers of security, a payment network may still fall prey to sophisticated online attacks. Thus, you must provide users with channels to report suspicious transactions or unusual activity on their accounts. Build a team of skilled customer support executives to simplify the process.

Educate Your Customers: Finally, educate your customers about secure UPI transactions through social media, press releases, webinars, and other available mediums. Create tutorials and infographics to educate them about popular hacking attempts like phishing. Ask them to never share sensitive information such as OTP with anyone.

Wrapping Up

To ensure safe and secure digital transactions, as a business you must prioritise security by using reputable payment gateways, maintaining up-to-date systems, and implementing two-factor authentication. While UPI itself is highly secure, enforce strict password policies, regularly monitor transactions for suspicious activity, and make Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures mandatory. Invest in data encryption, conduct security audits, and provide seamless customer support. Educate your customers about secure practices to contribute to a favourable environment for digital transactions in the booming UPI landscape. By doing so, you can actively contribute to a secure and favorable environment for the continued rise of digital transactions.

Wondering how to offer secure digital transaction services to your customers? Leverage Worldline's personalised suite of payment solutions to reach customers in 5000+ cities and towns across India.