More checks, balances needed to curb fraud'

India's digital platforms and ecosystems need to be a step ahead of the fraudsters with more layers of protection and a strong focus on education, as the country grows leaps and bounds in digitization, said industry stalwarts at a session in Mumbai on Thursday.

- Khushboo Tiwari & Anjali Kumari

Speaking at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit, the key players in the payments and security ecosystem agreed that it required greater cooperation to beat the fraudsters at a time of proliferation of personal data. They spoke at the session titled 'Securing Payments in the Digital Age: Mitigating Fraud Risk and Emerging Landscape of Financial Crime.'

"Indians have a very inherent cultural thing of seizing the moment, where we say the best opportunities are sometimes the ones which you don't take. So, in a growth economy, where people have ambitions and as they're coming into the fold, they are more vulnerable to getting scammed, fear, greed," said Karan Sapra, Head of Consumer Payments and Financial Services, Google Pay.

The panelists cautioned customers on the breadth of the scams and frauds, and the rising possibilities of falling for such tricksters.

"Fraud includes identity theft, or combines fake data with real information to deceive the system. There are also cases of ghost accounts. Loan disbursement fraud is another area of concern, with fraudsters often tricking businesses into transferring funds into specific bank accounts, sometimes with insider involvement," said Natasha Jethanandani, CTO, Kaleidofin.