The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCL) has directed all the participating banks and third-party application providers (TPAPs) to activate “UPI Help”, a new feature embedded with the unified payments interface (UPI) aimed at addressing customer complaints and ensuring a seamless experience for users.
In this regard, NPCI issued a circular on April 19, 2023, which came after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in a notification on August 6, 2020, called for an online dispute resolution system for digital payments.
Merchant entities, such as banks, payment service providers, aggregators, etc., were advised to implement UPI Help by June 15, 2023.
UPI Help is an online dispute resolution process that seamlessly handles customer queries and complaints. For instance, the tool will enable the payment service provider banks and third-party application providers on the UPI network to resolve their customer complaints expediently.
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UPI Help Functions
Some functions of UPI Help include ‘Refund API’, ‘Check Status API’, and ‘Req-complaint API’. Refund API is a preapproved online refund service with full or partial refund functionality besides providing transaction updates to merchants.
The merchant must also provide ‘check status API’, which is a real-time transaction status provided to customers. The ‘Req-complaint API’ feature allows the merchant platforms to check the status of complaints in real-time.
Additionally, the NPCI circular stipulates that all refunds will be made through the original payment method. Therefore, ignoring it would result in customer issues due to the mismatch between the actual amount and the refund sum.
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Dispute Resolution
The circular says merchants must use the NPCI’s existing back office dispute management system for refunds. If the merchant acquiring entity uses other channels of processing ‘refunds’, and any issue arises in the aftermath, the liability will be on the merchant acquiring entity for such transactions. The merchants must also provide the transaction summary and refund status in real time.
NPCI, which owns and operates UPI, prescribes the guidelines for UPI participants. The end-users can complain about UPI transactions on the PSP or TPAP app. First, the complaint goes to TPAP, and if it is unresolved, it then goes to PSP. The user can also escalate the matter by taking it up with the bank where the customer has an account and, after that, to NPCI. They can also send the complaint to the banking ombudsperson or the ombudsman for digital complaints.
