The Payments Council of India (PCI), the apex body for payment and settlement players in the country, has launched an initiative called ‘Project Pratima’ to standardise payment icons across apps and platforms, making it easier for customers to identify digital payments icon.

PCI Executive Director Gaurav Chopra told Media, “This is a project of PCI to standardise icons for the most common payment use cases. The main idea behind this is to protect people from fraud and increase the adoption of digital payments. Standardising icons will help users Identify if the payment is working correctly.”

Pratima means “icon” in Sanskrit. The project’s website aims to increase trust, safety and familiarity with digital payment icons to avoid customers falling prey to fraud or making mistakes when conducting payment transactions.
PCI’s Project Pratima website reads: “Digital payment application operators and payment entities are using different icons. This may not be clear to new users and those introducing a unified set of icons for payment operations and processes.”

Fraud incidents have increased over the past year, with significant growth in Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions. According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), 84,145 UPI fraud complaints were received in the second quarter of 2022 (i.e., the April-June quarter). This represents a 346% increase in the number of complaints compared to the 18,864 complaints received in the second quarter of 2021.

The core team implementing the project consists of volunteer designers from fintech companies FamPay, Setu, Jupiter, Amazon Pay, Safexpay and Paytm.

The working group includes members from banks and payment companies, including design and user interface heads from HDFC Bank, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), State Bank of India (SBI), Visa, Whatsapp Pay, PayU, Eko, Mobikwik and Paytm.

“Some members have volunteered their design teams to work with us to create these widely used icons. We will soon share details with all members and banks asking them to start using these new icons,” added Chopra.

PCI represents more than 90% of non-bank companies in the payments ecosystem, including prepaid payment instrument (PPI) operating licensees, payment banks, payment gateways, merchant aggregators, card networks, international money transfer and trade providers, and BBPOU and UPI providers.

Project Pratima’s webpage includes an icon library with the option to download standardised icons created by a core team of fintech designers. While payment platforms can customise icons’ colour and background shape, PCI has recommended some considerations for its members.

For example, successful transactions must be shown with a tick in a green circle and failed transactions with a cross in a red circle to avoid user confusion.

Additionally, the site lays out design principles stating that even without labels, icons must be recognisable, accessible on-screen, scalable and flexible to accommodate various brands.

The initiative to standardise icons is only the first phase of the project. In Phase 2, PCI will work to make payments easier for the visually impaired.