More Stories

Informist, Wednesday, May 21, 2025

NEW DELHI – The Department of Telecommunication has launched "financial fraud risk indicator" to help financial institutions prevent cyber fraud and enhance cyber protection, the Ministry of Communications said in a release Wednesday. The financial fraud risk indicator, through its risk-based metric, will flag mobile numbers as medium-, high-, or very high-risk when digital payments are proposed to be made to such numbers.

"It empowers stakeholders, especially banks, NBFCs (non-bank financial institutions), and UPI (Unified Payment Service) service providers to prioritise enforcement and take additional customer protection measures in case a mobile number has high risk," the release said. 

The risk indicator is part of telecom department's Digital Intelligence Platform that regularly shares with stakeholders the list of mobile numbers that were revoked along with the reasons for disconnections like involvement in cyber-crime, failed re-verification, or exceeding prescribed limits. These numbers are also usually used for financial frauds.

According to the ministry, one of the leading UPI platforms, PhonePe, is an early adopter of this fraud risk indicator, and it has used the metric to decline transactions linked to 'very high risk' mobile numbers. PhonePe alerts the user and needs user confirmations for further engagement with those numbers. Other banks are also actively using the data for mitigating cyber frauds, the ministry said.  

The government has been flagging increased risks of financial frauds and has directed financial institutions to improve cyber risk assessment. In January, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that India needs tech-savvy forces to help protect its digital economy from cyberattacks. Last year, Home Minister Amit Shah had also said that the government was working on creating a nationwide 'suspect registry' of cyber criminals in collaboration with banks and financial intermediaries to strengthen fraud risk management capabilities of the financial ecosystem.  End

Reported by Priyasmita Dutta

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

For users of real-time market data terminals, Informist news is available exclusively on the NSE Cogencis WorkStation.

Cogencis news is now Informist news. This follows the acquisition of Cogencis Information Services Ltd by NSE Data & Analytics Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. As a part of the transaction, the news department of Cogencis has been sold to Informist Media Pvt Ltd.

Informist Media Tel +91 (11) 4220-1000

Send comments to feedback@informistmedia.com

© Informist Media Pvt. Ltd. 2025. All rights reserved.