With increased instances of fraud in digital payments becoming a significant concern, this initiative aims to reduce cyber security threats and malicious activities like phishing; and, streamline secure financial services, thereby enhancing trust in digital banking and payment services, said Sanjay Malhotra, governor, RBI
Mumbai: In a bid to further improve the cyber security measures in the financial sector, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to introduce the ‘bank.in’ as an exclusive Internet domain for the Indian banks.
Also, it is planned to have an exclusive domain viz., “fin.in” for other non-bank entities in the financial sector, said the RBI.
With increased instances of fraud in digital payments becoming a significant concern, this initiative aims to reduce cyber security threats and malicious activities like phishing; and, streamline secure financial services, thereby enhancing trust in digital banking and payment services, said Sanjay Malhotra, governor, RBI on Friday.
The Institute for Development and Research in Banking’ Technology (IDRBT) will act as the exclusive registrar.
The actual registrations will commence from April 2025.
Detailed guidelines for banks will be issued separately, said the RBI .
Also, enabling additional factor of authentication in cross-border card not present transactions, the RBI has introduced additional factor of authentication (AFA) for digital payments for enhancing the safety of transactions which, in turn, provided confidence to customers to adopt digital payments.
This requirement, however, is already mandatory for domestic transactions only.
In order to provide a similar level of safety for online international transactions using cards issued in India, it is proposed to enable AFA for international card not present (online) transactions as well.
This will provide an additional layer of security in cases where the overseas merchant is enabled for AFA. Draft circular will be issued shortly for feedback from stakeholders, said RBI.