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Ministry of Communications | Department of Telecommunications (DoT) | Reserve Bank of India (RBI) | National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has reached a major milestone as over 1,000 banks, Third-Party Application Providers (TPAPs), and financial institutions successfully onboarded the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP). Developed by the Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU), DIP serves as a secure, real-time backend repository for sharing intelligence on the misuse of telecom resources in cybercrimes. A cornerstone of this platform is the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI), a risk-based metric launched in May 2025 that classifies mobile numbers as Medium, High, or Very High risk based on data from various stakeholders, including the Chakshu facility and the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP).
In six months, this inter-agency collaboration has prevented an estimated ₹660 crore in cyber fraud losses by enabling banks and UPI providers to decline suspicious transactions or issue proactive user alerts. The platform currently facilitates coordination among 1,050+ organizations, including central security agencies, state police, and social media platforms like WhatsApp.
What is the “Financial Fraud Risk Indicator” (FRI) and how does it protect UPI users? The Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) is a multi-dimensional analytics tool that assigns a risk score to mobile numbers proposed for digital payments. Driven by support from the RBI and NPCI, the FRI acts as a “soft signal” integrated directly into banking and payment workflows via secure APIs. When a high-risk number is identified—often because it was previously flagged for “Digital Arrest” scams or linked to fraudulent SIM-box networks—the system allows TPAPs like PhonePe or Paytm to display on-screen warnings or block the transaction instantly, preventing the user from losing funds.
Policy Relevance
The large-scale adoption of DIP and FRI marks a paradigm shift from reactive recovery to proactive detection in India’s digital economy.
Inter-Agency Synergy: The platform creates a unified ecosystem where telecom intelligence (DoT) meets financial oversight (RBI/NPCI), effectively breaking the silos that fraudsters exploit.
Jan Bhagidari (Public Participation): Through the Sanchar Saathi portal and Chakshu app, citizens act as crowdsourced intelligence providers, reporting over 4,000 to 5,000 high-risk numbers daily.
Institutional Standardisation: The RBI’s advice for all banks to integrate the FRI ensures a consistent “telecom-driven layer” of security across the entire payments landscape.
Systemic Resilience: By managing the Mobile Number Revocation List (MNRL), the DIU ensures that disconnected numbers—lost to cybercrime or failed re-verification—are instantly identified across the banking system to prevent their reuse for fraud.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders: How can the Digital Intelligence Platform be evolved into a “Self-Learning” system that automatically updates risk scores based on real-time feedback from the 1000+ onboarded financial institutions?
Follow the full news here: 1000+ banks, TPAPs and Financial Institutions On boarded on DoT’s Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP)