Fintechs should join the govt’s anti-fraud platform to help curb the menace: Financial services secretary Nagaraju

Fintech startups should join the government-backed fraud detection platform — India Digital Public Intelligence — as shareholders along with public sector banks, said M Nagaraju, secretary, department of financial services, ministry of finance.

The platform, which is meant to track and prevent cyberattacks in the financial services sector, will be operational within the next two months, he said while speaking at an industry event organised by the Unified Fintech Forum and India Fintech Foundation in Bengaluru on Friday.

“I think fintechs should join this platform as shareholders… Big banks have already joined and are now owning the platform," Nagaraju said, adding that everyone should partner with it to take effective measures to enhance cybersecurity.


This comes in the backdrop of a rapid rise in digital fraud. Banks have frozen at least 850,000 mule accounts at 700 branches across the country, as reported by ET last November.

Nagaraju said that some of the bigger fintechs were already part of the programme.

He lauded the transformative role that fintechs have played in India's financial inclusion journey, and noted the scale achieved by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in processing real-time payments, and the imminent expansion of data-driven credit with AI.