In a major push to combat telecom and digital payment fraud, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has blacklisted between 300,000 and 400,000 SIM cards linked to scams, according to government data. The move follows the rollout of the Financial Risk Indicator (FRI) in May, designed to identify high-risk phone numbers associated with fraudulent activities such as investment scams, fake job offers, and other financial crimes.
The FRI system flags around 2,000 high-risk numbers daily, with artificial intelligence-based pattern matching used to detect additional suspicious SIMs within the network. This intelligence is shared in real time with UPI platforms like Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe, helping them block or delay potentially fraudulent transactions worth crores of rupees in just the past month.
A senior DoT official noted that the time-to-action on fraud accounts has now been reduced to a matter of hours. This reflects the growing maturity of DoT’s Digital Intelligence Platform, which enables seamless, real-time data sharing among telecom operators, banks, payment platforms, and law enforcement agencies.
Banks and financial institutions are leveraging FRI alerts to decline suspicious transactions, issue timely customer warnings, and add extra verification steps when necessary.
This AI-enabled ecosystem marks a significant leap in India’s fraud prevention framework, aiming to secure the country’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
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