Digital frauds spike since July; RBI probing causes, warns of risks from digital currencies

The incidence of digital frauds has risen since July, and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is analysing the data to understand the reasons behind the uptick, deputy governor T. Rabi Sankar said on Friday at the State Bank of India Banking and Economics Conclave in Mumbai.

“If you look at frauds per number of transactions, we would see that compared to last year, from the beginning of the year the incidence kept reducing substantially until about July, when it again started rising,” Sankar said. “So, it might be cyclical — they might go up and come down — but we are hoping that with the digital infrastructure we are creating and the success we are seeing, at this stage we will be able to contain that.”