Mumbai: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday hosted a meeting of the Joint Committee of Regulators (JCoR) to advance coordinated measures against spam, fraud, and misuse of telecom infrastructure. The forum focused on rolling out collaborative regulatory measures, especially in light of rising digital payment-linked frauds.
Top Regulators Join Hands to Counter Rise in Digital Payment Fraud
According to the TRAI officials, representatives from Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority of India (IRDAl), Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) attended the meeting, joined by officials from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
Phased Migration to 1600-Series for BFSI Sector Service Calls Discussed
Regulators discussed setting up timelines for migration to the dedicated 1600-number series for transactional and service calls in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sectors. Considering different scales of operation of entities, it was agreed that migration may be made in a phased manner based on the inputs provided by the sectoral regulators to TRAI.
Real-Time Fraud Data Exchange Proposed to Enable Swift Action Against Scammers
The committee discussed the requirement of automated exchange of spam and cyber fraud data between Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, digital intelligence platform of the DoT and the platform maintained by the access providers. This will enable swift action against the telecom resources of the fraudsters -such as number disconnection- so as to prevent them from carrying out further frauds, officials said.
"TRAI has revamped its SMS header portal to empower customers to get the information about the entities sending commercial messages using a particular SMS header. With financial fraud increasingly linked to mobile transactions and UPI platforms, the inclusion of NPCI as a special invitee adds a critical payments dimension to the JCoR's mandate," said an official.
