The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued new guidelines to prevent increasing financial frauds through voice calls and SMS. In this, Regulated Entities (REs) have been asked to adopt strict security measures till 31 March. The measures put in place by RBI have sought to prevent frauds caused by misuse of mobile numbers, which are commonly used in fraud in digital transactions. Under this, rules have been fixed regarding registration and number series for commercial calls or messages. RBI and TRAI are trying to secure India’s growing digital financial ecosystem by preventing misuse of mobile numbers for fraudulent activities.
One of the new rules of RBI is that the Mobile Number Revocation List (MNRL) of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will be used by banks, NBFCs and payment aggregators to remove access related to invalid or closed mobile numbers. Also, the accounts related to them will have to be monitored so that their misuse can be prevented. RBI has asked the customers to make their customers aware about these rules through emails, SMS and in regional languages.
Soon calls from companies will come from these numbers
RBI has decided that now banks, stock brokers and other financial institutions as well as small and big businessmen will have to make voice calls through 140/160 numbering series for commercial messages. This means that soon service and transactional messages will come from numbers like ‘1600xx’ and promotional calls from numbers like ‘140xx’. This will help you know who is registered and who is not.
Entities will have to register their customer care number
According to the new RBI rules, entities will have to register their customer care number on the Sanchar Sathi portal of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). This rule has been brought in to increase transparency and help customers identify fake numbers. To prevent unsolicited commercial communications, all entities will be required to register on TRAI’s Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform, use pre-defined templates for SMS and calls, and clearly communicate with customers about digital identity cards for promotional messages. Consent must be obtained. This is being done so that telemarketers who are not regulated are controlled and every communication can be traced. Under the new RBI rules, it will be mandatory for entities to disclose any security breach.
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