UPI has made sending money as fast as tapping a few numbers on a screen — which is exactly the problem banks are now trying to solve. A batch of proposals sent to the Reserve Bank of India would add a deliberate pause to certain peer-to-peer transfers, asking you to actively confirm before the money actually leaves your account.
Here's what's been proposed, and what it would actually change for how you use UPI day to day.
The core idea: a final 'Yes' before the money moves
Under the proposal, certain P2P (person-to-person) UPI transactions would trigger a confirmation prompt after you enter your PIN — a screen asking you to tap 'Yes' to send the payment through immediately, or 'No' to cancel it. It's a small addition to the flow, but it closes a real gap: right now, once you authorize a UPI payment, there's effectively no undo. A single mistyped digit in a phone number or a moment of distraction during a scam call can send money to the wrong person in seconds, with no cooling-off window at all.
If you don't respond: a 1-hour delay instead of instant credit
The proposal also accounts for the reality that people don't always respond to prompts right away. If you don't tap 'Yes' or 'No', the transaction isn't cancelled outright — it goes through, but the funds are credited to the recipient only after a 1-hour delay. This is pitched as a middle-ground alternative to a blanket delayed-credit rule that would have applied to every transaction regardless of risk. Instead of slowing down all UPI payments uniformly, only the ones that don't get an active response face the wait.
Not every payment will trigger this — only the unusual ones
This is the detail that matters most for everyday users: the confirmation prompt isn't proposed for every UPI transaction you make. Banks have suggested it apply only to transactions flagged as unusual — payments made at odd hours, transfers to a beneficiary you've never paid before, or other patterns that fraud-detection systems already treat as higher risk. Your regular payments — the milk delivery guy, your usual grocery store, splitting a bill with a friend you've paid before — should continue to go through exactly as fast as they do now.
Why this is being proposed now
UPI fraud has grown alongside UPI's own explosive adoption, and a large share of it follows a familiar pattern: a scammer creates urgency, gets the victim to authorize a payment quickly, and the money is gone before anyone has time to think it through. A confirmation step aimed specifically at unusual transactions is designed to interrupt exactly that pattern — giving someone a beat to notice "wait, I don't usually send money to this number" before the transfer completes, without adding friction to the transactions that are genuinely routine.
What this means for you, if it's approved
Nothing changes for your day-to-day, familiar payments. What would change is that first-time transfers to a new person, or payments made outside your normal pattern, might come with one extra tap and a moment's pause — a small trade-off if it means catching a mistaken or fraudulent transfer before the money is actually gone. As with any RBI proposal at this stage, the final rules — including exactly which transactions qualify as "unusual" — could still change before implementation. Worth keeping an eye on if you use UPI for anything beyond routine, familiar payments.
