AI upgraded the fraudster. Let’s upgrade our defence

The mule account has quietly become the load-bearing wall of digital fraud in India. As laundering channels multiply at machine speed, banks do not need louder alarms — they need a transaction-monitoring intelligence layer that cuts the noise and catches what matters. To understand why it has grown so dangerous, it helps to remember how much the ground beneath us has moved.

Ten years ago, banking largely meant a branch, a queue, and a passbook. Today it lives entirely on the phone with UPI alone processing nearly `30 trillion in a single month across more than 800 million digital users. Here lies the uncomfortable corollary: every new rail we build for legitimate money is also a new lane for illicit money.