70 lakh mobile connections involved in online financial frauds disconnected: Finance ministry

The government has disconnected 70 lakh mobile connections involved in cybercrimes and financial frauds reported through digital intelligence platforms. Defrauded money to the tune of ₹900 crore has been saved benefitting 3.5 lakh victims, according to the facts shared by the ministry of finance post a review meeting by the department of financial services on Tuesday.

DFS secretary Vivek Joshi chaired a meeting on cyber security in financial services sector and online financial frauds with various agencies. Issues related to cyber security in the financial services sector and increasing incidents of recent online financial frauds were discussed in the meeting.

"The meeting took stock of the preparedness of the banks and other financial institutions in tackling the challenges arising from cyber security in the financial services sector, increasing trend of digital payment frauds, and deliberated on a focused approach to mitigate such cyber-attacks and frauds," the finance ministry says in a release.

Some of the key aspects related to cyber security and online frauds discussed in the meeting were renewed focus on facilitating seamless coordination between police, banks and financial entities for real time tracking and blocking of defrauded money along with strategy to tackle menace of mule accounts by banks. It was stressed that the banks also need to improve the response time in handling the alerts on online financial frauds received from different agencies.

The other discussions pertained to bringing all financial institutions including NBFCs and major cooperative banks on 'Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS)' platform, wherein 259 financial intermediaries are already onboarded.

Appointment of regional/state level nodal officers by the banks and financial institutions to cater to the requirements of law enforcement agencies, maintaining a central registry of onboarding of merchants and standardisation of KYC, whitelisting of digital lending apps through consultation with relevant stakeholders, status on implementation of recommendations of the digital lending working group including setting up of Digital India Trust Agency (DIGITA) and bringing a new legislation ‘Banning of Unregulated Lending Activities (BULA) Act' were some of the other aspects discussed in the meeting, according to a release from the ministry of finance. It was stressed that all stakeholders including banks and financial institutions need to undertake more customer awareness and sensitisation programmes on digital payments security.