News Brief
RBI Tightens UPI Security With DoT's Mobile Number-Based Fraud Detection System—What You Need To Know
UPI payment
The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) on 30 June issued an advisory, directing all Scheduled Commercial Banks, Small Finance Banks, Payments Banks, and Co-operative Banks to integrate the Department of Telecom's (DoT) Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) into their systems.
This marks a significant development in India’s efforts to combat cyber-enabled financial frauds, especially at a time when UPI continues to dominate digital payment methods across the country.
The FRI was developed by DoT’s Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) and launched in May 2025 as a real-time, mobile-number-based fraud risk scoring system.
The FRI assigns a risk level—Medium, High, or Very High—to mobile numbers based on inputs sourced from multiple platforms.
These include the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) run by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), DoT’s own Chakshu platform, and data shared by banks and financial institutions.
This risk classification enables financial institutions to take preemptive measures such as issuing warnings, delaying or declining high-risk transactions, and strengthening customer authentication.
Leading financial institutions such as PhonePe, HDFC Bank, Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank, India Post Payments Bank, and Paytm are already using the system to flag and respond to risky mobile numbers.
The new RBI advisory is expected to broaden this usage across the entire banking ecosystem.
This includes API-based integration between bank systems and the DoT’s Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP), enabling real-time data exchange and continuous model refinement.
DoT also maintains and shares with stakeholders a Mobile Number Revocation List (MNRL), which details numbers disconnected due to links with cybercrime, failed re-verification, or misuse.
Many of these numbers are tied to financial fraud, and the MNRL adds another layer of risk intelligence to help banks and fintech players act decisively.
With UPI being the most preferred payment method across India, this intervention could save millions of citizens from falling prey to cyber fraud.
The FRI allows for swift, targeted, and collaborative action against suspected frauds in both telecom and financial domains.
According to DoT, the integration of FRI into banking workflows will reinforce the government’s broader Digital India vision by improving digital trust, supporting early detection of fraud, and enabling sector-wide coordination.
As more institutions adopt the FRI framework, the government expects it to evolve into a sector-wide standard, reinforcing trust, enabling real-time decision-making, and delivering greater systemic resilience across India’s digital financial architecture.
