RBI to set up central payment fraud information registry, considering 'substantial' growth in digital infrastructure
At present, there is a mechanism in place for banks to report all banking frauds to the Central Fraud Monitoring Cell of the Reserve Bank of India and the proposed dedicated registry will further enable this process.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday announced the creation of a central payments fraud information registry, which could ensure quick and systemic responses in cases of financial frauds.
At present, there is a mechanism in place for banks to report all banking frauds to the Central Fraud Monitoring Cell of the Reserve Bank and the proposed dedicated registry will further enable this process.
The central bank said with the digital payment ecosystem making substantial progress in terms of growth of the payment infrastructure, as well as volume and value of digital payment transactions, fraud risk monitoring and management by the stakeholders, have assumed added importance.
"It has always been the endeavour of the RBI to improve the confidence of customers in the payment systems. To carry forward these efforts and ensure quick and systemic responses, it is proposed to facilitate the creation of a central payment fraud registry that will track these frauds," RBI said.
Image: AFP
It also said payment system participants will be provided access to this registry for near-real-time fraud monitoring.
The aggregated fraud data will be published to educate customers on emerging risks. The central bank will issue a detailed framework in this regard by end-October.
The RBI has set aggressive targets to push digital payments in the country which it outlined as a part of the vision document, which it released in the month of May, this year.
In the document, RBI said that the total number of digital transactions is expected to increase more than four times from 2,069 crores (20.69 billion) in December 2018 to 8707 crores (87.07 billion) in December 2021.
The RBI is also pushing for accelerated growth in individual retail electronic payment systems, both in terms of number of transactions and increased availability.
As a part of the vision document, RBI said that payment systems like UPI and IMPS are likely to register average annualised growth of over 100 percent and NEFT at 40 percent over the vision period, ending 2021.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)
