Your phone number stops showing up in UPI payments
From 4 September, GPay, PhonePe, Paytm and the rest must show only the last four digits of your mobile number to the person you are paying.
Krish Dalal
What this means for you
Nothing breaks and no action is required for payments to keep working. What is worth doing is opening your UPI app's profile settings and checking whether you can switch to a username-based UPI ID instead of one made from your phone number. If you sell anything, or your QR code is displayed anywhere public, do it today.
NPCI set 4 September 2026 as the compliance date for a circular telling banks and UPI apps to stop displaying customers' full mobile numbers during a transaction. Only the last four digits may be shown to the counterparty, and after a payment made by scanning a QR code the number should not appear at all.
The change came after a run of complaints, a large share of them from women, about harassment and identity exposure that began with a stranger reading a full phone number off a payment screen. Handing over your number to complete a transaction was never a design goal of UPI. It was a side effect of most people's UPI ID being their number.
The second half of the circular addresses that root cause: NPCI wants apps to offer a username-style UPI ID as the default rather than one built from your mobile number. If your app offers this, switching is worth the two minutes, because a masked number still leaks four digits and a username leaks none.
Sources
- National Payments Corporation of India, Circulars and guidelines
- Business Standard, NPCI plans to mask phone numbers on UPI apps to boost user privacy
Check the linked source and publication date before acting. If you spot an error, email hello@paisaexpert.com and we will correct it with a dated note.
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