India’s RBI Leverages DoT’s Fraud Risk Indicator: A Milestone in Cyber–Financial Security

On June 30, 2025, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a directive for all Scheduled Commercial, Small Finance, Payments, and Co‑operative Banks to integrate the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)—developed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)—into their transaction monitoring systems.

What Is the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator?

• Launch & purpose: Released in May 2025 by the DoT’s Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU), FRI is a risk-classification metric that assigns mobile phone numbers a status of Medium, High, or Very High risk, based on their linkage to financial fraud.

• Data sources: This classification is an outcome of inputs obtained from various stakeholders including reporting on

  • National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) by Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (“I4C”)

  • DoT’s Chakshu platform

  • Intelligence from banks, NBFCs, UPI providers, and telecom operators.

• Mobile Number Revocation List (MNRL): DIU also issues a list of phone numbers revoked due to cybercrime links, failed re-verification, or misuse—all strongly tied to fraud.

How FRI Works in Practice

Banks and fintech platforms integrate FRI into their systems via API-based real-time querying—directly connecting their transaction engines to the DoT’s Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) ensuring real-time queries, instant feedback, and ongoing model improvement.

Upon a transaction attempt:

• Medium‑risk: prompts additional verification or customer notifications

• High/Very High‑risk: can result in transaction blocking, delays, or manual review.

Early adopters—PhonePe, Punjab National Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Paytm, and India Post Payments Bank—have already implemented FRI to strengthen fraud prevention efforts.

Why This Is Revolutionary

1. Seamless Agency Collaboration
   Integrating telecom intelligence into banking systems marks a new level of inter-agency coordination—laying the foundation for real-time fraud response.

2. Proactive Intelligence Gathering
   FRI flags suspicious mobile numbers before crimes occur, using signals from cybercrime databases, telecom data, and reported incidents.

3. Real-Time Fraud Interception
   As transactions happen, they are screened instantly—sidelining traditional manual detection and enabling swift protective action.

4. Minimal Fraud Impacts
   The automation enables immediate, data-driven decisions—reducing the time window for fraud to succeed and minimizing financial losses.

5. Protection at Scale
   As UPI and mobile payments surge, FRI helps shield millions of users from phishing, SIM-swap, and impersonation attacks across the nation.

6. Continuous Feedback Loops
   API-powered integration allows banks and the FRI system to learn from each transaction, evolving in real time to adapt to new fraud patterns.

Conclusion

The RBI’s mandate to integrate DoT’s FRI marks a defensive breakthrough in India’s digital finance ecosystem. It shifts the paradigm from reactive fraud control to proactive, risk-informed action at transaction time, protecting citizens in a realm increasingly defined by mobile and digital transactions.

Stay aware. Stay safe.