RBI to establish digital payments intelligence platform as cyber frauds spike

The Reserve Bank of India has launched a digital payments intelligence platform as banks continue to witness a surge in digital frauds.

"Growing instances of digital payment frauds, however, highlight the need for a system-wide approach to prevent and mitigate such frauds. It is, therefore, proposed to establish a digital payments intelligence platform for network level intelligence and real-time data sharing across the digital payments’ ecosystem," said RBI governor Shaktikanta Das.

Intelligence panel

The Reserve Bank of India has also constituted a committee to examine various aspects of setting up the platform. As per Economic Times, the panel will be chaired by Abhaya Hota who played a key role in transforming India into a digital economy as the first chief executive officer of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Members of the panel would include representatives of NPCI, State Bank of India, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank. The report also mentioned that Vipin Surelia, head of risk at Visa, Arif Khan, chief innovation officer at Razorpay, Jitendra Gupta, founder of Jupiter, and Pranay Jhaveri, managing director of Euronet, have been appointed as members of this committee from the payment industry.

ET Bureau also reported that the platform will define the operational parameters and processes that will determine the extent to which data will be provided by reporting entities like banks and fintechs.

Surge in cyber frauds

As per The Economic Times, an analysis of frauds reported across banks has revealed a significant increase in the number of cases in FY24, with a total of 36,075 cases, marking a nearly 300 per cent rise from the 9,046 cases reported in FY22.

As per RBI's annual report of FY24, the amount involved in these frauds has drastically decreased from Rs 45,358 crore to Rs 13,930 crore. The total value of fraud reported in FY24 saw a 46.7% drop.

The Reserve Bank of India also noted that while private sector banks reported the highest number of fraud cases over the past three years, public sector banks accounted for the majority of the fraud amounts.

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