Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advances in Forensics and Cyber Technologies (ICFACT 2025)

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Digital Forensics Challenges in UPI Fraud, QR Scam and Online Payment Theft— A Review

Authors
M. Bharadwaj1, *, B. N. Rajarajeshwari1
1Asst. Professor Department of Digital Forensics, School of Sciences, Malla Reddy University, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
*Corresponding author. Email: bharadwaj861@gmail.com
Corresponding Author
M. Bharadwaj
Available Online 5 May 2026.
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_27How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Authentication; encryption; endpoint security; evidence collection; fraud detection; KYC (Know your customer); Log retention; money mules
Abstract

The rapid adoption of digital payments particularly India’s Unified payments Interface (UPI) QR- based acceptance, and mobile wallets has produced dramatic convenience gains and equally rapid growth in fraud. This review synthesizes recent literature, incident reports and forensic practice to (1) characterize the main attack vectors used in UPI/QR/Online payment theft, (2) identify digital forensic challenges that impede investigation and prosecution, and (3) propose technical, procedural and policy recommendations to strengthen evidence collection, attribution and remediation. Key challenges include ephemeral evidence, encrypted and proprietary ecosystems, cross-jurisdictional/ multi-actor money-mules, weak endpoint hygiene, and gaps in logging and KYC. Recommended mitigations span better log retention and standardization, improvised endpoints and UX for fraud detection, stronger legal mandates for evidences preservation, and adoption of machine assisted triage and explainable ML for transaction level forensics. Major claims are supported by recent government, academic and industry reports.

Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advances in Forensics and Cyber Technologies (ICFACT 2025)
Series
Advances in Computer Science Research
Publication Date
5 May 2026
ISBN
978-94-6239-610-4
ISSN
2352-538X
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_27How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - M. Bharadwaj
AU  - B. N. Rajarajeshwari
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/05
TI  - Digital Forensics Challenges in UPI Fraud, QR Scam and Online Payment Theft— A Review
BT  - Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advances in Forensics and Cyber Technologies (ICFACT 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 287
EP  - 295
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_27
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_27
ID  - Bharadwaj2026
ER  -