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Business Standard
9 hours ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Airtel urges RBI, NPCI and banks to collaborate on digital fraud fight
Bharti Airtel has approached around 40 banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), seeking collaboration to establish a collective database of known fraudulent financial domains. Airtel expressed support for regulatory discussions and offered assistance to the RBI in framing mechanisms to ensure that over-the-top (OTT) platforms are held responsible for consumer protection in financial communication, according to a PTI report. The company has also proposed launching joint awareness campaigns to inform the public about evolving tactics in digital fraud and to promote secure digital practices. On 15 May, Airtel introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) based security platform designed to block fraudulent websites in real time, aiming to prevent digital scams targeting users. In a regulatory filing, Airtel stated that the service is the first of its kind globally. The platform has been launched in Haryana and will be expanded to other parts of India in due course. According to Airtel, the solution is compatible with multiple communication platforms, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, emails, web browsers and SMS. Collaboration with NPCI In a separate communication to NPCI, Airtel suggested a partnership to improve the safety of the country's digital payment infrastructure. The telecom operator proposed that awareness initiatives use the combined outreach of Airtel and NPCI to educate users on secure online behaviour, identifying phishing threats and protecting against new digital fraud methods. It also suggested workshops to develop and commercialise anti-fraud solutions to help reduce financial fraud cases. In the communication, Airtel Vice Chairman and Managing Director Gopal Vittal wrote to NPCI MD and CEO Dilip Asbe: 'The NPCI has been deploying AI-based models that offer an advanced real-time Fraud Risk Monitoring and Management solution that generates alerts and allows banks to detect and prevent fraud across all online NPCI products.' Airtel outlined specific proposals in its 16 May letter, including: 'Closer collaboration between Airtel and NPCI to create a repository of known fraudulent financial domains, enabling proactive blocking of these malicious sites and creating a multi-layered defence against digital fraud.' Airtel said its fraud detection technology, which restricts access to malicious websites and phishing links at the access point, could complement NPCI's existing systems. The telecom stated: 'Additionally, during these programmes as well as our overall telco acquisition and experience, we believe that we have strong signals that could lead to identification of potentially fraudulent transactions or users.' It also recommended joint awareness efforts and workshops to build fraud resistance in the digital payments ecosystem. 'Through this collaboration, NPCI, Airtel and the banking sector can collectively create a more robust and resilient framework for reducing fraud and building greater confidence in India's digital financial services. Airtel remains committed to doing its part and would be happy to provide further technical details and explore how we can work together with the NPCI to enhance the security and integrity of India's digital payments ecosystem,' the letter said. RBI partnership In a separate letter to RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra, Vittal acknowledged the central bank's initiatives, including its work with regulated entities and the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) on the system. Vittal wrote: 'This powerful AI-based system has already demonstrated its ability to identify mule accounts used to route illicit funds. By analysing user behaviour and transaction patterns, banks can now flag and disable suspicious accounts more efficiently, thereby disrupting fraud at the transactional layer.' He added: 'Airtel believes that our fraud detection solution can complement these efforts by stopping fraud at the very first step: the moment a user attempts to access a malicious site.' 'Airtel remains committed to doing its part and would be happy to provide further technical details and explore how we can work together with the RBI in this critical fight against digital fraud,' Vittal stated. OTT cyber risks The company also raised concerns about security risks associated with OTT platforms. It said replicating the protection level of SMS on OTT platforms is 'impossible' because detecting and blocking fraudulent links on these platforms is more difficult compared with websites. Airtel also noted the absence of traceability, compliance obligations and regulatory access within OTT platforms. 'In this context, and in light of the ongoing RBI consultation on additional factor authentication (AFA) for digital payments, we wish to emphasise that financial transactions must continue to be conducted over secure telecom networks. Telecom networks offer a level of protection and oversight that OTT platforms currently lack, thereby helping to mitigate fraud risks and enhance overall consumer safety,' Vittal wrote. Banking industry Airtel's collaboration proposals received positive feedback from both private and public sector banks. Previously, Airtel had approached Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea to propose a joint initiative against telecom fraud, aimed at addressing scams targeting users through telecom networks. In those letters, Airtel cited data showing that over 1.7 million cybercrime complaints were recorded in the first nine months of 2024, with financial losses exceeding ₹11,000 crore. The company urged all telecom providers to jointly work to combat fraudulent and deceptive practices targeting individuals.
Time of India
29-04-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Limit usage of non-financial requests to UPI: NPCI to banks
Live Events The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has asked banks to restrict the number of non-financial transaction requests they send to the central network of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).The NPCI has told banks to audit their systems through an auditor certified by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team ( Cert-In ) to review usage of these transaction requests. It has also directed them to conduct an annual audit of their systems from now a circular issued on April 26, the Mumbai-based payment network said banks can initiate up to three 'check transaction' API requests in the first two hours of initiating a API is used by banks to check with the NPCI network if a transaction has been processed. If a transaction gets stuck due to some reasons, then the bank checks the status of the transaction before initiating a failure message to the direction from the NPCI comes in the wake of the two outages observed on UPI in March and April, which resulted in transactions failing across the country for several hours. A diagnosis of the systems after the outages had revealed excessive use of 'check transaction' API done by banks, which clogged the the NPCI has asked banks to wait for 90 seconds before they initiate such requests to the UPI servers, so that there is no clogging of the network. On a monthly basis, UPI processes around 18 billion transactions with more than 550 million transactions settled another step towards regulating the most popular digital payment system, the NPCI has asked UPI apps and banks to only show the beneficiary name to the customer while undertaking a person-to-person and to-merchant UPI payment.'Names extracted from QR codes, user-defined names of the payee or any other logic should not be displayed to the payer in the UPI app,' it said in another circular issued on April is a major push on the Indian financial services ecosystem to adopt UPI for all forms of digital payments. The finance ministry also wants the NPCI to take concrete steps around taking UPI to the global Monday, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman met NPCI chief executive Dilip Asbe and asked the corporation along with all stakeholders to work together to be able to support a billion transactions per day in the next two-three years.
Bloomberg
15-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
India Targets 300 Million New Users for UPI Payments Platform
India plans to bring hundreds of millions of new users onto Unified Payments Interface, its real-time payments system, while pitching the platform for wider adoption overseas. National Payments Corporation of India aims to draw an additional 200 million to 300 million Indians to UPI to 'break their cash memory' through initiatives including delegated accounts for children and household staff, who may lack access to traditional bank accounts, said Dilip Asbe, its managing director and chief executive.
