HIGHLIGHTS

- The new mechanism ‘Validated UPI addresses’ and ‘SEBI check’ will be available to users from Oct 1, 2025 

- Foster trust and security, enhance investor confidence

- Combat growing issue of impersonation and unauthorised money collection

FPJ News Service New Delhi

Capital market regulator Sebi on Wednesday announced a significant initiative to enhance investor protection and combat unauthorized money collection in the securities market. Effective October 1, 2025, Sebi will introduce a structured and validated Unified Payment Interface (UPI) address mechanism, featuring the exclusive “@valid” handle, for all Sebi-registered investor-facing intermediaries,” Sebi chief Tuhin Kanta Pandey told media representatives.

In recent years, unregistered entities have increasingly misled investors by collecting funds without authorisation, often siphoning off these amounts for personal gain. This new framework is designed to proactively curb such fraudulent activities, enabling investors to easily identify legitimate Sebi registered market intermediaries and make payments to them securely and efficiently.

The new initiative will address this growing issue of impersonation and enhance investor confidence as Sebi has mandated a new UPI address structure for all registered intermediaries (stockbrokers and mutual funds and who collect funds from investors). This mechanism is set to significantly improve the safety and accessibility of financial transactions within the securities market by providing a verified and secure payment channel.

The core of this new framework is a mandatory, structured UPI address for intermediaries, composed of a username and a unique handle: (i) username (this will be a readable name chosen by the intermediary, followed by a mandatory suffix that clearly identifies their category-- example: .brk for a stockbroker or .mf for a mutual fund); and an exclusive “@valid” handle (the handle will feature a unique and exclusive identifier, “@valid”, combined with the name of the self-certified syndicate bank.

These “validated” handles will be exclusively allocated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) only for payment collection by Sebi-registered intermediaries. Moreover, to ensure easy identification of legitimate transactions, investors will see a clear visual cue, a “Thumbs-Up inside a green triangle” icon, when making a payment to a registered intermediary through this new handle. Intermediaries are also required to generate a QR code that prominently features this “thumbs-up” logo for investor convenience.