India to Standardise Icons Used in Payment Apps and Platforms to Prevent Fraud

​The Payments Council of India (PCI), the industry body for the digital payments ecosystem in the country, has launched an initiative named "Project Pratima" to standardise the icons used in payment apps and platforms to make it easier for customers to identify their functions while also preventing fraud.

PCI is a body representing over 90 percent of non-bank companies in the payments ecosystem. Its members include NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India), PayPal, Western Union, Apple Pay, Visa and Google Pay.

PCI stated that payment apps often use different icons, which could make it unclear for new users and hinder the adoption of digital payments. "Project Pratima aims to introduce a uniform set of icons for basic payment actions and processes."

"Standardised icons will help users identify payments actions correctly," said PCI executive director Gaurav Chopra. "It is a project which PCI has undertaken to standardise icons of most common use cases in payments."

The main idea behind the project is to safeguard users against fraud and increase the adoption of digital payments, PCI said.

As UPI transactions have grown over the past year, a significant rise in fraud incidents has been observed. More than 84,000 UPI-related fraud complaints were received by Indian authorities in Q2 2022, which is up 346 percent from the same quarter last year.

Source: Regulation Asia