UPI Scam Detection for QR Codes

Abstract

The proposed UPI Scam Detection System for QR Codes is designed to protect users from fraudulent digital payment activities by automatically analyzing, verifying, and validating QR codes before any transaction takes place. With increasing dependence on UPI-based payments in India, scamsters exploit users by generating malicious QR codes that redirect payments to unauthorized accounts. Traditional QR scanners lack fraud-detection intelligence and operate purely as decoding tools.

This project introduces an intelligent, web-based fraud prevention system that integrates Django, computer vision, and machine learning to detect manipulated QR codes, cloned merchant IDs, suspicious patterns, tampered images, and mismatched UPI handles. The system uses an image-based ML classifier trained on genuine and fraudulent QR datasets to flag anomalies, while server-side validation checks UPI patterns, metadata integrity, and image distortion parameters. A user-friendly web dashboard allows scanning, verification, reporting, and visualization of risk levels.

The solution enhances digital payment safety by identifying scam indicators in real-time, empowering users and businesses to validate QR codes prior to transactions. The system also establishes a scalable framework for future integration with mobile apps, OCR-based metadata extraction, and real-time fraud databases.

Country : India

1 Himanshu Trigune2 Sumit Pawar3 Pranit Chavan4 Sushant Tatpalle5 Prof. Priya Borkar6 Prof. Nita Pawar

  1. Student, Computer Engineering Diploma, Ajeenkya D. Y. Patil School of Engineering, Charholi, Pune, India
  2. Student, Computer Engineering Diploma, Ajeenkya D. Y. Patil School of Engineering, Charholi, Pune, India
  3. Student, Computer Engineering Diploma, Ajeenkya D. Y. Patil School of Engineering, Charholi, Pune, India
  4. Student, Computer Engineering Diploma, Ajeenkya D. Y. Patil School of Engineering, Charholi, Pune, India
  5. Guide, Professor, Computer Engineering Diploma, Ajeenkya D. Y. Patil School of Engineering, Charholi, Pune, India
  6. HoD, Professor, Computer Engineering Diploma, Ajeenkya D. Y. Patil School of Engineering, Charholi, Pune, India

IRJIET, Volume 9, Issue 12, December 2025 pp. 98-104

doi.org/10.47001/IRJIET/2025.912014

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