The centrepiece proposal is a one-hour delay on account-to-account transfers above Rs 10,000 made by people, sole proprietors, or partnership corporations — transactions the place there is no such thing as a chargeback mechanism if fraud happens. The delay might be utilized on the sender’s finish, the receiver’s finish, or each. The Rs 10,000 threshold is deliberate, as such transactions account for round 45% of fraud instances by quantity and signify practically 98.5% of complete fraud worth, based on knowledge from the Nationwide Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP).
For senior residents and individuals with disabilities, the RBI has proposed a further layer of verification for transfers above Rs 50,000, probably requiring approval from a pre-designated trusted individual. Almost 92% of fraud losses by worth happen above this threshold, usually by social engineering and impersonation scams.
The RBI has additionally proposed giving clients larger management over their very own accounts by channel-wise on and off switches, self-set transaction limits, and a kill change to immediately disable all digital funds, accessible by way of cell banking, web banking, branches, or IVR techniques.
To crack down on “mule” accounts that are financial institution accounts utilized by fraudsters to obtain and launder stolen funds — the RBI has proposed capping annual credit at Rs 25 lakh for accounts that haven’t undergone enhanced due diligence. Accounts looking for greater limits would want to offer extra verification of their enterprise profile and funding sources.
The proposals come in opposition to the backdrop of an explosion in each digital funds and fraud. Whereas digital fee volumes have grown at a compound annual fee of 53% over the previous decade, reported fraud instances have surged from 2.6 lakh in 2021 to twenty-eight lakh in 2025 — with the worth of fraud leaping from Rs 551 crore to almost Rs 22,931 crore over the identical interval, pushed by deepfakes, pretend name centres, and mule account networks.
