RBI To Unveil Exclusive Internet Domain To Curb Financial Fraud

Doubling down on its efforts to combat financial fraud, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is rolling out an exclusive internet domain, ‘bank.in’, for Indian banks.

This initiative aims to curb cybersecurity threats and malicious activities such as phishing. It also intends to streamline secure financial services while boosting trust in digital banking and payment services. 

The Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) will serve as the exclusive registrar, with registrations beginning in April 2025. 

The RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra also said that the detailed guidelines for banks will be issued separately. 

However, he mentioned that going forward the RBI intends to extend this approach to non-bank entities in the financial sector with an exclusive “fin.in” domain in the future. 

Alongside this, RBI also extended the mandatory additional factor of authentication (AFA) for digital payments from domestic transactions to international transactions using cards issued in India. 

“This will provide an additional layer of security in cases where the overseas merchant is enabled for AFA. The draft circular will be issued shortly for feedback from stakeholders,” governor Sanjay Malhotra said. 

The latest measure is the latest addition to the list of several measures RBI took to prevent cyber fraud. In its last MCP meeting on December 6 2024, the RBI introduced an AI/ML-powered model called MuleHunter.AI to detect mule bank accounts.

This development comes on the sidelines of RBI concluding its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) today, reducing the repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25% from 6.5%. 

As per government data, Indians lost as much as INR 11,333 Cr to cyber fraud in just the first nine months of 2024. Notably, the country saw as much as 6.32 Lakh cases of UPI frauds worth INR 485 Cr in the first six months of the financial year 2024-25 (FY25).