World Senior Citizens Day: Three Banking App Settings Retirees Must Change To Protect Their Savings From Cyber Criminals

World Senior Citizens Day is celebrated on August 21 globally. As India celebrates the occasion, it is important to acknowledge the changing age demographics in India. According to the Economic Survey for 2025-26, India’s average life expectancy has increased to 70 years, indicating that people are expected to live much longer than they did in the past. However, as seniors age, they must also ensure that they stay safe in their golden years.

Rising Instances of Cybercrime Against Senior Citizens

A key aspect of this safety lies in being financially secure. Typically, seniors are targeted more by scammers who try to defraud them of their hard-earned life savings. According to an answer given by Bandi Sanjay Kumar, Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Rajya Sabha on August 5, as many as 1,03,488 complaints were lodged by senior citizens in 2025. Additionally, the reported amount they were defrauded of amounted to Rs 4005.12 crore in 2025.

How Can Senior Citizens Safeguard Their Finances

As the prevalence of such incidents increases and the quantum of money defrauded grows, it is important to mitigate such incidents. Notably, mitigating such a risk requires alertness and presence of mind. However, there are practical ways to digitally curb these attempts or limit the monetary damage such fraudsters can cause.

One of the primary ways this can be done is through the banking app used. With the rise of net banking, almost all banks in India offer a digital banking app. While this offers immense convenience, it also leads to vulnerabilities. Modifying certain settings can greatly improve the security of these apps for senior citizens.

These changes can be made either by the seniors themselves or by their children who have access to their phones. Here is a look at some crucial settings:

Turn Off NFC

With the rising use of UPI, not a lot of people use the tap-to-pay feature or Near Field Communication (NFC). However, leaving this feature on allows for contactless payments without entering a PIN for smaller transaction amounts. Cybercriminals can potentially exploit this by using hidden handheld scanners near the victim in crowded places like markets or public transport to deduct money. Thus, turning it off can ensure that every physical card transaction requires secure PIN authentication, protecting their finances from proximity-based theft.

To disable NFC if it is not being actively used, users can go into their smartphone network settings and toggle the feature off. Additionally, within the banking app itself, users should navigate to the card management section and disable the setting for contactless ‘tap to pay’ payments.

Change Default Transaction Limits

When you get a new debit card, the default transaction limits are typically set much higher than what an average retiree would typically need for managing their everyday expenses. If a senior citizen is being defrauded and the scamster manages to authorise a payment or gains access to their account, a higher transaction limit allows the criminal to drain a massive amount of money within seconds. Thus, decreasing the ceiling acts as a financial safeguard, limiting the funds a scammer can steal in a single attempt and protecting the bulk of their savings. 

The transaction limits can be reduced within the banking app by navigating to the account or card settings menu. Under the transaction limits section, users can reduce the maximum daily amount allowed for online transactions, ATM withdrawals, and retail purchases to a number that aligns with the retiree's actual daily monetary requirements.

De-linking The Primary Bank Account From UPI

Another way to protect the main account from being accessed by cyber criminals, retirees can set up a secondary, low-balance bank account which they can only use for daily expenses. Once such an account is opened, they can link only this secondary account to their Unified Payments Interface (UPI) applications, restricting access to their primary savings account from the digital payment network. 

Since scammers frequently use malicious QR codes or urgent payment requests to trick users into authorising rapid money transfers, senior citizens can end up falling for a digital fraud attempt or cyber theft. This strategy isolates and protects their primary retirement savings from QR code-based attacks, limiting the potential monetary damage.