Today, most of India carries out online digital transactions through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform. In fact, UPI handles 75 per cent of all online digital payments and digital retail payments have also grown by over 50 per cent primarily because of the widespread use of UPI.
However, this surge has also led to occasional problem whereby one might end up sending money to the wrong UPI address. Fortunately, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has laid out ways on how to retrieve such money that you may have erroneously sent to someone.
How to Recover Money Sent To Wrong UPI Address
Here’s how you can recover money erroneously sent to a wrong recipient
Contact the Recipient: You could reach out to the person to whom you have sent the money by mistake and ask them to refund it to you. You could reach out to them through their UPI ID or phone number and request for a refund.
Seek Bank Assistance: If you cannot contact the recipient, contact your bank. Provide your bank with the transaction details, and they will initiate the chargeback process to recover your money.
“Contact your bank directly and raise a wrong credit chargeback with the Unique Transaction Reference (UTR) number of the payment,” Online payments application PhonePe says in its blog.
Try UPI App’s Customer Support: According to RBI guidelines, you can also report the issue to your UPI app, such as Google Pay, Paytm, or Phonepe through their customer care. You will have to submit proof of the transfer and request for a refund.
NPCI Complaint: If your issue still remains unresolved, you may file a complaint on the NPCI portal. Go to https://www.npci.org.in/ and then click on “What we do”. Then select “UPI” from the options available. Next, scroll down to find the “Complaint Section”, fill in the transaction details, such as the nature of the transaction, bank name, UPI ID, email, and phone number.
After this, select the ‘issue’ as “Incorrectly transferred to the wrong UPI address”. Also, attach valid proof, like your bank statement that shows the incorrectly made transaction.
If the issue remains unresolved after 30 days, you could contact the Banking Ombudsman for further assistance.
How To Deal With Pending Transactions
A pending transaction occurs when money is deducted from your bank account as you use UPI application, but it is not received by the recipient. In such a scenario, the person making the payment should inform the online payment application about the error.
Typically, the bank takes about 48 hours to update the payment status. If the transaction is successful, the amount will reach the recipient’s account, but if the transaction fails to go through, it will credit the amount back into the account from where it was deducted, either the next day or within 48 hours.
This is because under RBI guidelines on Harmonisation of Turnaround Time (TAT) and customer compensation for failed transactions, banks should credit the beneficiary account by T + 1 day. Banks are required to pay Rs 100 per day as penalty if the delay is beyond T + 1 day.
