India mulls payment lags, checks for senior citizens as digital fraud rises, RBI paper shows
The proposals come at a time when digital payment fraud is rising sharply in India, driven by sophisticated scams such as fake call centres, mule bank accounts used by fraudsters to receive and transfer stolen money, and deepfake impersonation.
The Reserve Bank of India has suggested a one-hour delay on account-to-account transfers over 10,000 rupees ($107.92) through fast payment networks, including the Unified Payments Interface, to give customers time to cancel transactions.
These delays will not apply to merchant payments that already have dispute resolution mechanisms in place, the central bank said in the article.
The RBI has proposed a mechanism that involves temporary debiting of the customer’s account during the delay period and issuing alerts if transactions appear suspicious. RBI said low-value transactions will remain instant to avoid disruption of routine payments.
The number of reported digital payment scams increased more than 10-fold to 2.8 million between 2021 and 2025, while the value of losses increased nearly 40-fold to 230 billion rupees ($2.49 billion) during this period, according to data from the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
EXTRA CHECK FOR PAYMENTS OF ELDERLY PEOPLE
The central bank is also working on extra protections for elderly and vulnerable customers, who are prime targets for fraudsters. If implemented, customers aged 70 and over, as well as people with disabilities, will need the approval of a “trusted person” for transactions over 50,000 rupees. RBI will likely allow customers to opt out of the security system.
“Citizens above a certain age or persons with different disabilities (persons with disabilities) may be particularly vulnerable to social engineering-based scams. These targeted incidents often result in disproportionately higher financial losses,” said the RBI.
Other measures include introducing annual limits for additional checks on certain bank accounts and introducing “kill switches” that allow users to instantly disable all digital payments.
The RBI has asked for public feedback on the discussion paper by May 8 and said it will consider preparing formal guidelines after reviewing the responses.
