Guidelines On Capturing Consumer Location On UPI Applications

The National Payments Corporation of India (“NPCI“) vide its operating circular dated July 5, 2022 (“Circular“) has issued fresh guidelines in relation to collection and usage of geo-tagging data by Unified Payments Interface (“UPI“) applications and third-party service providers. The Circular is issued in addition to the existing customer data collection guidelines of NPCI in respect to UPI transactions and will come into effect from December 1, 2022. The Circular prescribes the following:​

1. Location and geographic details can only be collected by UPI apps with the customer’s consent and the same cannot be made a mandatory requirement.​

2. The customer should be permitted to revoke the consent granted and the UPI apps shall continue to provide its services even when the customer chooses to revoke the consent earlier granted for sharing the location/geographical details.​

3. Where a customer gives consent to collect location or geographic details, the same must be correctly passed to UPI, failing which shall attract strong action from NPCI.​

4. If the customer has not given consent to share any location or geographic details, no UPI apps shall deny/disable its UPI service.​

5. These guidelines shall only apply to domestic UPI transactions and where the customer (payer) is a person or individual who is initiating the transaction.​