The Reserve Bank of India has unveiled a fresh set of UPI features at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, including a tap-to-pay option, a unified app view called MyUPI, an in-app fraud control tool named Safety Switch, and AI-powered customer support for digital payment disputes.
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UPI Tap & Pay Arrives
Announced by the RBI Governor at GFF26, UPI Tap & Pay introduces NFC-based tap-to-pay functionality to India’s payments network, letting users complete transactions without scanning a QR code. The feature is designed to speed up in-person payments at retail counters, a segment where UPI has already become dominant but where QR scanning still adds a small amount of friction.
MyUPI and Safety Switch
MyUPI is pitched as a unified window that lets users view transaction details across different UPI apps in one place, addressing a common complaint from people who juggle multiple payment apps for different purposes. Safety Switch, meanwhile, gives users the ability to instantly pause or limit their UPI payment channels the moment they suspect fraud, putting more real-time control directly in the hands of account holders.
AI-Powered Customer Support
Rounding out the announcement, the RBI also introduced AI-based customer support tools aimed at speeding up grievance and dispute resolution for UPI transactions, an area that has historically been a pain point for users dealing with failed or disputed payments.
| Feature | What It Does |
|---|---|
| UPI Tap & Pay | NFC-based payments without QR scanning |
| MyUPI | Unified transaction view across UPI apps |
| Safety Switch | Instantly pause/limit UPI channels during suspected fraud |
| AI Customer Support | Faster grievance and dispute resolution |
These announcements build on UPI’s already massive scale in India, where the system processes billions of transactions monthly and has become the default way most Indians pay for everyday purchases, from street vendors to large retail chains.
The Safety Switch feature in particular addresses a growing concern as digital payment fraud attempts have risen alongside UPI’s adoption, giving users a faster way to protect themselves without needing to contact their bank or app provider first.
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The timing of these announcements at the Global Fintech Fest, one of the largest fintech gatherings in the world hosted in India, underscores how central UPI has become to the country’s broader digital economy narrative. Regulators and industry players alike have used the event to showcase how India’s payments infrastructure continues to evolve well beyond its original QR-code-and-PIN model.
For merchants, UPI Tap & Pay could meaningfully speed up checkout times at high-footfall locations like transit stations, food courts, and retail chains, where every second saved per transaction adds up across thousands of daily customers. NFC-based payments have long been a staple of card-based tap-to-pay systems abroad, and bringing similar convenience to UPI closes a notable feature gap.
The Safety Switch feature is likely to draw particular attention from consumer advocacy groups, since it directly responds to rising concerns about UPI-linked fraud, including scams that exploit the speed and irreversibility of instant payments. Giving users a one-tap way to pause their own payment channels shifts some of the initial response burden away from banks and toward the account holder in a fraud scenario.
Rollout timelines for these features across individual UPI apps have not been detailed yet, and users should expect a phased introduction as banks and payment app providers update their systems to support UPI Tap & Pay, MyUPI, and Safety Switch over the coming months.
TechnoSports will update this story once official rollout dates for UPI Tap & Pay and MyUPI are confirmed by NPCI or individual banking partners.
Source: The CSR Journal
