DoT introduces Financial Fraud Risk Indicator to strengthen Cyber Fraud Prevention

New Delhi [India], May 21 (ANI): The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), under the Union Ministry of Communications on Wednesday introduced Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI), which enables Intelligence sharing with Banks, UPI service providers and Financial Institutions in an effort to strengthen Cyber Fraud Prevention, according to a statement from the Ministry.
"FRI boosts cyber protection and validation checks in case of mobile numbers flagged with this tool when digital payment is proposed to be made to such numbers," read an official statement from the ministry.
FRI allows for swift, targeted, and collaborative action against suspected frauds in both telecom and financial domains. With UPI being the most preferred payment method across India, this intervention could save millions of citizens from falling prey to cyber fraud, the ministry said.
The sharing of FRI with stakeholders- an output from a multi- dimensional analytical tool was developed as part of the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) to empower financial institutions with advance actionable intelligence for cyber fraud prevention.
FRI is a risk-based metric that classifies a mobile number to have been associated with Medium, High, or Very High risk of financial fraud.
"This classification is an outcome of inputs obtained from various stakeholders including reporting on Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C's) National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), DoT's Chakshu platform, and Intelligence shared by banks and financial institutions. It empowers stakeholders-especially banks, NBFCs, and UPI service providers- to prioritize enforcement and take additional customer protection measures in case a mobile number has high risk," read the ministry's statement.
The Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) of DoT regularly shares the list of Mobile Numbers that were disconnected (Mobile Number Revocation List - MNRL) with stakeholders along with the reasons for disconnections, such as found involved in cyber-crime, failed re-verification, exceeding prescribed limits.
"As the life of a mobile number that is misused in cyber frauds is generally few days, and full verification can take several days, an advance indicator on risk associated with such numbers is very useful. Thus, as soon as a suspected mobile number is flagged by a stakeholder, it undergoes multi-dimensional analysis, and classifies it into Medium, High, or Very High financial risk associated with it," the statement added.
The assessment is then shared with the stakeholders through DIP.
According to the ministry, PhonePe UPI app, as one of the initial adopters of FRI has used it to decline transactions linked to Very High FRI mobile numbers and display an on-screen alert as part of PhonePe Protect feature.
The data shared by PhonePe indicates the efficacy of the model as the predictability of the numbers passed as soft signal to be actually involved in cyber fraud cases has been found to be very high, the ministry said.
Certain other UPI platforms are also integrating DIP alerts into their systems, such as introducing transaction delays, with alerts and needing user confirmations. Other banks are also actively using the data for mitigating cyber frauds.
The ministry said, DoT continues to engage with financial institutions and digital payment platforms to further optimize alert mechanisms and reduce response time. The integration of FRI into customer- facing systems is expected to become an industry standard, bringing systemic resilience to India's digital financial ecosystem. (ANI)