Truecaller barred from adding new users to UPI

Government-run digital payments platform National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has barred Stockholm-based caller identification app Truecaller from adding new users to the unified payment interface (UPI) platform.

The move follows close on the heels of a bug on the Truecaller app that caused thousands of unsuspecting users being prompted to create accounts on the UPI platform. 

NPCI in a letter to the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said it stopped Truecaller from onboarding users when the bug came to light and that investigations are still underway.

In the wake of the backlash, TrueCaller issued an apology acknowledging the bug. It also released an update, which is said to have rectified the involuntary registrations on the UPI platform. 

“Less than 0.12% of our users in India got registered to UPI without their consent and we took quick actions to delete those accounts of affected users. Because the registration happened in the background, our affected users were never asked to create a UPI PIN code, which means that the registration process never finished,” TrueCaller said in a statement.  

Several TrueCaller users raised concerns about a security breach, which would expose the credentials linked to their bank accounts. Acting on the complaints, Truecaller released an update which reportedly rectified the anomaly. 

TrueCaller has been trying to gain a foothold in the digital payments and lending sectors since it acquired multi-bank payments app Chillr in June 2018.

Last year, it tied up with Bank of Baroda to facilitate digital payments backed by UPI on the Truecaller Pay app not long after partnering with ICICI Bank. 

UPI is a mobile app managed by the NPCI which provides an integrated platform for accessing accounts from a range of banks.