BioCatch has released a report on digital fraud detection powered by behavioral biometric intelligence. The report findings show
account takeover
represents more than half of all
fraud cases
for its customers in India. The findings come on the heels of a recommendation by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that financial institutions in that country abandon text-based one-time-passcodes as a method of secure authentication.
“The existing OTP-based authentication doesn't protect customers against new-age frauds, including customer-initiated fraudulent transactions,” counter-fraud expert and former Head of Group Fraud Risk and Investigations at First Abudhabi Bank Charanjeet S.Bhatia said in response to the RBI recommendation.
“With the right technology and implementations, banks can do a lot more than what they are currently doing to protect customers.”
BioCatch’s 2024
Digital Banking Fraud Trends
in India report offers a look at the latest fraud risks and prevention strategies for banks in the country as they rapidly employ digital transformation strategies. The report notes a concerning bump in mule accounts in India, in line with what BioCatch data shows as a growing global threat.
“The prevalence of mule accounts potentially represents the most under-the-radar trend in the entire fraud space,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Tom Peacock said. “The mule accounts banks succeed in identifying almost certainly represent just the tip of the iceberg. Indian financial institutions must employ more robust security measures to both detect and then shut down these sprawling mule networks.”
Key India Report Findings:
• Account takeover attacks still dominate: Accounting for 55% of all fraud in India, third-party account takeover fraud still represents a bigger slice of the fraud pie than the social engineering scams BioCatch sees exploding elsewhere on the planet.
• Mules a massively underreported plague: Every device found to participate in mule activity in India logged into an average of 35 accounts each.
• Fraudsters likely accessing Indian mule accounts from outside the country: While 86% of the first session of documented mule account activity came from within India, after a month that number fell to just 20% – and 16% of those sessions used a VPN.
• BioCatch customers saw more mule activity (14% of the total) in Bhubaneswar than anywhere else in the country: Lucknow and Navi Mumbai accounted for 3.4% of recorded mule activity, two cities in West Bengal – Bhagabatipur and Gobindapur – 1.7% and 2.6% respectively, Mumbai 2.2%, Bengaluru 1.8%, and Cuttack 1.6%.
“The fraud threats we see in India are a mix of both common threats seen globally and unique threats we find only in this region,” BioCatch’s APAC Vice President of Sales Richard Booth said.
English (US) ·