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In India, where large numbers of citizens have fallen prey to these intricate schemes, a rise in online scams and frauds has been observed. Over the past few months, there has been disturbing reports of people losing considerable sums to online fraudters, sometimes amounting to several hundred thousand dollars. In order to fight this evolving threat, the government of India made a major step by blocking 70,00,000 mobile numbers that are reported to be associated with cybercrime or financial fraud.

Joshi, who chaired a meeting to discuss the issues of financial cyber security and rising digital payment fraud, said that banks have been asked to improve their systems and processes in this respect.

He added that another meeting will be held in January.

According to an official statement, about 900 million rupees of stolen money has been recovered, benefiting 3.5 million victims. He added that states have been requested to examine this issue and ensure data security, in the wake of recent reports on frauds relating to an enabling payment system based on Aadhaar AEPS.

In addition, he reported that a discussion had taken place on standardisation of Know Your Customer practices for merchants.

“All stakeholders including banks and financial institutions to undertake more customer awareness and sensitisation programmes on digital payments security,” said the Ministry of Finance in a statement on Tuesday.