Amid hacking fears, Truecaller bug reportedly signed-up Indians for UPI account

A bug on mobile directory app Truecaller, which has over 100 million active users in India, has affected UPI-based digital payments feature on the platform. The bug was automatically enrolling Truecaller user in the country to use unified payments interface (UPI) payment feature on the app.

Truecaller apologised for failing to deliver quality standard in the app and said it has discontinued the version which was hit by the bug but “for the users already affected, the new version with the fix will be available shortly”.

The mobile directory app said the users who have been hit by the bug can choose to manually deregister through the overflow menu in the app.

“We have discovered a bug in the latest update of Truecaller that affected the payments feature, which automatically triggered a registration post updating to the version. This was a bug and we have discontinued this version of the app so no other users will be affected.

“We’re sorry about this version not passing our quality standards. We’ve taken quick steps to fix the issue, and already rolled out a fix in a new version,” Truecaller said in a statement.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which authorises platforms to use UPI system for money transfer, said the bug would not have had any impact on bank account of customers.

“This is enrolling mistake by the app without customer consent. With this customer cant do any UPI txn. For on boarding to UPI the customer has to still enter 2FA (issuer OTP and debit card), and set UPI pin. The workflow mistake is limited to enrolling which will not have any impact on any customer account whatsoever,” NPCI Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Dilip Asbe said.

UPI system allows immediate money transfer through mobile device round the clock to any bank account.

According to the latest NPCI data, transactions worth Rs 4,41,050 crore have been carried in the current financial year using UPI system.