India’s scam protection landscape: risks, gaps, and the way forward
How India’s digital payment boom created a scam epidemic — and what financial institutions must do to fight back
White Paper
India's digital payment boom has created a scam epidemic, with over ₹22,842 crore (US$2.75B) in losses. Legacy fraud systems fail against today's manipulation-based scams. A seven-step framework — spanning susceptibility scoring, behavioral profiling, real-time intervention, and cross-sector collaboration — offers a path to sustainable defense.
India is facing a severe and growing scam epidemic. Digital fraud losses have surpassed ₹22,842 crore (US$2.75 billion), driven by AI-powered scams, organized criminal networks operating like structured enterprises, and the instant, irreversible nature of UPI payments.
Legacy fraud defenses are fundamentally ill-equipped for modern scams. Traditional systems detect unusual transactions, but today's scams manipulate customers into authorizing fraudulent payments themselves — exploiting behavioral blind spots, fragmented data, and rule-based rigidity that cannot keep pace with evolving threats.
Effective scam prevention requires a proactive, multi-layered strategy. Financial institutions must move beyond reactive controls and adopt a continuous defense framework — combining customer susceptibility scoring, behavioral profiling, real-time in-journey interventions, mule account monitoring, and cross-industry collaboration between banks, regulators, and telecom providers.