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# The Safer Alternative to Beneficiary Addition: Use UPI to Verify Before You Pay
- URL: https://www.narendravardi.com/the-safer-alternative-to-beneficiary-addition-use-upi-to-verify-before-you-pay/
- Published: 2025-05-10T18:15:37.000Z
- Updated: 2025-05-10T18:15:37.000Z
- Description: In this article, I talk about how to cross-verify the account holder's name using the Bank Account ID and IFSC code.
- Author: Narendra Vardi
- Tags: rough-note, fintech, 2025

**Imagine this**: you received the following message from your friend or a relative and need to transfer money to them. 

```
Account ID: 123456789012
IFSC Code: SBIN0005943
Amount: 10000
```

Bank Account ID and IFSC Code sample

Assuming that there's no fraud activity involved, you want to transfer the money. 

What would you do?

The majority of us will [add this account as a Beneficiary](https://www.kotak.com/en/personal-banking/self-help/add-beneficiary.html?ref=narendravardi.com) and proceed to transfer money. This is the age-old approach, and our minds are tuned to follow these instructions if we see `IFSC code` and `Bank Account ID`.

One of the major drawbacks of this method is that *we do not know the account holder's name*. There's no way to cross-verify if we are transferring to the right person (What if your friend has sent the wrong account number by mistake?)

There's a workaround for this, which is popularly known as the [Penny Test](https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-a-penny-test?ref=narendravardi.com). You transfer `1 INR(One Rupee)`to the account holder and verify if the other person received the amount. If received, then you will transfer the whole amount. 

This is a hassle if the other person is a company or an organisation. Who will you reach out to confirm if the payment is received or not?

**How do you solve this problem?** 

**Hint: UPI**.

When we think of UPI, we think only of the phone number and UPI ID. Did you know that we can transfer to a bank account using UPI?

> When you enter bank account details for transferring via a UPI app, it will get the account name holder's name and show it to us, which helps us to cross-verify.

**Here are the detailed steps for the Google Pay app.** 

Similar steps are applicable in other apps as well.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d9/fa/d9faef57-e1a8-4faa-a907-40713e9d52a6/content/images/2025/05/image-4.png)

Click on the "Bank Transfer" button on the front page.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d9/fa/d9faef57-e1a8-4faa-a907-40713e9d52a6/content/images/2025/05/image-1-1.png)

Enter the bank account details.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d9/fa/d9faef57-e1a8-4faa-a907-40713e9d52a6/content/images/2025/05/image-3-1-1.png)

The Banking name will be shown by the App itself.

[ICICI Bank even charges (as of 2025, 99 INR) for cross-verification of the account](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx2L2jfX6D4&t=2s&ab%5Fchannel=ICICIBank&ref=narendravardi.com). Clever way to make money, isn't it 😉